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I 



Ben teaching the Christmas Party to Sing. 

See page 18 


"S 





BEN AND BENTIE SERIES. 


BOYS AND GIRLS. 




NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS & HUNT 

CINCINNATI : 

WALDEN & STOWE. - 
1882. 




Copyright 1882, by 

PI-IILLIPS & HUNT, 


New York. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. The Christmas Party 7 

II. The Two Decisions 24 

III. Benue's College 47 

IV. The Temptation 68 

V. An Intimate Friend 91 

VI. The Confession 104 

VII. A Tragic Scene 114 

VIII. A Mysterious Providence 139 

IX. An Experiment 159 

X. The Shop-girl 172 


Jf Hirst ratio ns. 

Ben Teaching the Christmas Party to Sing 2 

A Tragic Scene 134 




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BOYS AND GIRLS. 


i. 

THE CHRISTMAS PARTY. 

f T was Christmas-eve. Snow covered the 
ground. The musical tinkle of sleigh- 
bells cut the frosty air. Houses, from base- 
ment to fourth story, were gay with lights. 
Music and bustle and the tread of thousands 
on the pavement banished stillness through- 
out the length and breadth of New York. 
Many who were on the street were happy; 
there were thousands who were sad. Count- 
less hearts turned toward the Christ-child — 
some in thankfulness, some in curious 
wonder, others with pleadings that seemed 
importunate, so long had they arisen. But 
the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, 
the beloved and the friendless, felt that in the 
air and in the houses and on the streets was 


8 


Boys and Girls. 


a something that said : “ Peace on earth, good- 
will toward men.” 

There was a Christmas party at the Win- 
throps. It was a party that had not its coun- 
terpart in New York. Bentie and Aunt Wini- 
fred were a month in preparing for it; Mrs. 
Holmes was also. She had not gone out as a 
washerwoman in six weeks. Ben’s letters 
toward the vacation expressed wonder in re- 
gard to the party, and Trot forgot all about 
medicine. 

Down in the basement the cook was bustling 
back and forth ; up in the main hall the porter 
was continually opening and shutting the great 
doors. Ascending the broad, sloping stairs, 
and softly entering the lofty chambers, in a 
blaze of light and flowers and beauty, were 
little children. They every one moved slowly. 
Some clung to the balusters or to a helping 
hand, or grasped crutches ; a few were carried 
immediately into the drawing-room and di- 
vested of their wraps. 

Bentie was every-where in a minute. The 
failure in cooking a dinner for her father had 
been the indirect cause of the party. In the 
latter part of November she went to Aunt 
Winifred and said : ** I am a regular ignoramus, 


The Christmas Party. 


9 


and I wish you would give me. housekeeping 
lessons on Saturdays until I can take complete 
charge of papa’s house.” 

Busy as she was with her studies, she yet 
threw herself with an abandonment and vigor 
into her kitchen life, which added much to her 
domestic wisdom. These new experiences over 
cooking and sweeping, arranging and buying, 
were not merely so many bare facts learned; 
they afforded Aunt Winifred a fine opportunity 
to give Bentie a multitude of lessons in econ- 
omy, buying, and the judging of the actual value 
of articles. As Bentie saw herself becoming 
skilled, and viewed with admiration the cakes 
and pies, the rolls and sauces, the meats and 
vegetables, her own hands had prepared, she 
wondered whether there were not some other 
people in the world besides her father to 
whom they would taste just as good. She 
wondered whether for Christmas-eve she could 
not take some of her goodies and give, as she 
expressed it, “a regular New Testament par- 
ty.” The more she thought of it the more 
possible it became. 

At length, when she ventured to speak of 
it to her father, Mr. Winthrop gave her full 
liberty as to money to make as many happy 


IO 


Boys and Girls. 


with her bounties as the capacity of his house 
would allow. Finding herself in a dilemma as 
to where and how she should seek just the 
persons she wanted at her party, she adroitly 
discovered how much a month Mrs. Holmes 
earned by washing, and then proposed that 
George’s mother should become a kind of city 
missionary at that sum, till Christmas, in go- 
ing with her and showing her where deserving 
poor children lived. 

“And, Mrs. Holmes,” said Bentie, “I wish 
to invite, as far as possible, those who are not 
only poor, but also afflicted with some bodily 
infirmity ; those who seldom get out of doors, 
and of whom few people think. I should like 
to have an interesting party, and yet one 
made up of uninteresting children. The well 
and the hearty, even though they may suffer 
now, will be able, by and by, to help them- 
selves, you know. Those who will come on 
Christmas-eve will probably be the poor whom 
we shall always have with us.” 

When Christmas-eve came the sleighs had 
gone back and forth, in lanes and narrow 
streets and filthy alleys, covered for a little 
while, thank God, by the purifying snow, until 
a host of afflicted little ones, full of awe and a 


The Christmas Party. ii 

keen, childish curiosity over their beautiful 
surroundings, were gathered in the Winthrop 
mansion. 

Ben was home from college. He had grown 
even taller. His reserve had partially worn 
away. There was in his manner, one could 
not say more manliness, but more dignity and 
self-confidence, a self-confidence quite removed, 
however, from conceit. During his absence 
he had applied himself so closely to work and 
had seen so little of any life that breathed the 
exquisite culture and beautiful spirit of his 
own home, that, on his return, he felt, for the 
first time in his experience, like breaking all 
the barriers of reserve which had heretofore 
shut him out from the majority of people. 
He entered with the zest of an exile into 
every thing that was homelike, domestic, and 
generous. His three months of self-discipline 
and self-dependence had also made broader 
the way upon which he had just entered at 
the close of our second volume. Notwith- 
standing an occasional failure, he had, on the 
whole, maintained among his fellow-students 
a bold, Christian standing, and had come 
home with his hopes so settled, his love to 
God so assured, that the “ mystery of godli- 


12 


Boys and Girls. 


ness ” was becoming more and more plain and 
beautiful. 

Bentie had joined Ben and George Holmes. 
She was so engaged in making the little waifs 
who filled the parlors laugh and play, that she 
came for only a few words at a time. No 
one could look at the boys — respectful, manly, 
loving admiration shining in their faces for the 
simple, unaffected girl who had asked them to 
join her in forming games — without feeling 
that Bentie was exercising a strong molding 
influence, stronger than though it were loud, 
boisterous, and commanding. Boys much 
rougher than either George or Ben had ever 
been would have done almost any thing rath- 
er than incur the displeasure of a girl so finely 
womanly and so delicate in all polite atten- 
tions as Bentie. 

So Ben and George, though wondering 
what they should do, advanced into the midst 
of the curious little ones, and in five minutes 
each was busy in his own characteristic 
manner. 

George had a wonderful gift for telling sto- 
ries. Presently, twenty or thirty children, 
lame, blind, crippled in some way, were list- 
ening breathlessly and with tears to the 


The Christmas Party. 13 

stranger. Beautiful things he related, not 
only with his tongue, but with those great, 
solemn brown eyes of his, which, now that 
friends were increasing and work had brought 
manly independence, were sparkling and very 
attractive. 

“ Who is the smallest one among you ? ” 
asked George. 

“ Me !” and a chubby hand was quickly 
raised and a large pair of blue eyes surveyed 
the semicircular group with critical gravity. 

George glanced at the flaxen-haired little 
girl, then at her maimed foot hanging limp 
and helpless below her faded dress, and thought 
to himself : “ Here is a little sufferer to whom 
I must bring kindness home before I can im- 
press her with any thing pathetic in the history 
of others.” So he left his quondam throne 
and presently returned with a soft and very 
low chair, into which he gently lifted the 
child. 

“ This is nice,” she said softly, as she sank 
into the warm, broad seat, and folded her, 
hands in her lap with a deal of satisfaction. 

“ At my house the smallest allers gets the 
best, if there is any best,” said a thin boy 
with a hungry expression, and who was 


14 Boys and Girls. 

perched uncomfortably on a high reception- 
chair. 

The blue eyes turned, and, in accordance 
with George’s opinion of their owner, said 
what her tongue did shortly: “The big ones 
had ought to give up to the little ones ; ” 
then, after a pause : “ ’Taint so bad to be 
lame. I gets more to eat and more to wear 
than my brothers and sisters;” 

“ Are you happier in having more than 
they?” asked George. 

“ I don’t know. ’Taint no use to be cold 
and hungry when you can be warm and full.” 

The questions having now aroused the in- 
terest of all, George, with true skill, intro- 
duced his story. 

“ Abbie,” to the owner of the blue eyes, 
“ suppose the chair you sit in were yours? ” 

Involuntarily the short fat fingers grasped 
the arms with an air of ownership. 

“ And suppose these large, beautiful rooms 
and all the stores in New York that are to- 
night so full of candies, and handsome dolls, 
and rich silks, and chairs like the one you are 
in, and every thing, indeed, that can make 
little hearts happy and hungry stomachs full, 
belonged to your father. And suppose your 


The Christmas Party. 15 

poor foot were straight and strong, and that 
all of these dear children, who are blind or 
deaf or sick in some way, were as beautiful — 
as beautiful as Miss Bentie,” added George, as 
the young hostess passed the attentive group. 
“ Suppose, too, that the handsome, healthy 
children did just as you wished to have them 
do, and that you could have what you wanted, 
and be where you wished to be, and that every 
one who knew you loved you better than any 
one else. Now, suppose that your father 
shared all of his great possessions with you. 
After awhile some one to whom he had been 
very kind and to whom he had given a great 
many presents disobeyed his commands. He 
decided to send the naughty man and all of 
his family away from a fine house which he 
had given them, because he had told the man 
that, if he were naughty, he should be severe- 
ly punished; would you feel sorry for the 
man ? ” 

“ I guess I would. And I would give him 
some of my things. Why, I would not know 
what to do with so much, any way.” 

“ Suppose your father did not think it best 
for you to give him presents, what would you 
do then?” 


i6 


Boys and Girls. 


“ I would ask him not to punish the man.” 

“ And if he said he must ? ” 

The little girl looked puzzled, and the large 
boy on the reception-chair said : 

“ I once took a whipping to save my broth- 
er ’cause he was sick and kinder scrawny. But 
I tell you, it took all the grit I had. Father 
puts it on hard. Now, do you mean to say — ” 
and Job looked curiously at George. 

“ I don’t like to be punished if I haint 
done nothing bad,” said Abbie quickly. “ The 
man had ought to have minded.” 

ft He ought, but, you see, he didn’t.” 

“Well, I believe,” said Job, “if it came to 
the pinch, I might take the punishment ; but, 
if he didn’t feel real grateful for what I did, 
I’d tell my father to give it to him then, thick 
and heavy.” 

“ Shall I tell you what some one did whose 
Father found it necessary to inflict a severe 
punishment on one who had disobeyed him ? 
He went to his Father and said, ‘ I will bear the 
severest suffering that can be inflicted on me 
in order that this man may some day have a 
beautiful home again. The greatest sorrow 
I could experience would be to leave you and 
go to live with this man and teach him better/ ” 


The Christmas Party. 17 

“ That, I take it, was too much of a good 
thing — offering more than I could,” inter- 
rupted Job. 

“ It is the truth,” said George. “ He did do 
just this.” 

Abbie worked a little uncomfortably in her 
chair, but did not take her eyes from his face. 

“ He spent thirty-three years in teaching the 
disobedient man, and the other wicked people 
of the country to which he had gone, to do 
better. He lived in the same manner as the 
poorest of them did. The only reward he 
received was that some of them tried to kill 
him. They did at length seize him and nail 
him on a cross, where he hung till he died.” 

“ Why, you are telling about Jesus Christ,” 
said Job, softly. “It seems kinder new, 
though.” 

“While agonizing on the cross,” George 
continued, “ he lifted up his voice to his Fa- 
ther and said, ‘ Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do.’ ” 

Abbie asked so many questions, that George 
simplified the whole Bible story of Christ’s life. 
He showed the royal Herod terrified at the 
birth of the divine King, and made Job’s eyes 
moisten over the lamentations of the mothers. 


1 8 Boys and Girls. 

He pictured the child Jesus reproving the 
priests in the temple. He then related, 
with deep reverence, the wonderful cures the 
child when grown had effected. Afterward, as 
only a sympathetic person can, he portrayed 
the sweet love and forgiving spirit our gentle 
Lord is desirous of implanting in children’s 
souls. George finally contrasted the Saviour’s 
dying love with the hatred of the Jews and 
the cruelty of the Romans. Not one little 
child failed to understand the spirit of the great 
theme. Each returned to its plain, dull home 
with a picture in its heart of that country 
where there are many mansions, and where all 
who reach it will be housed in a mansion 
forever and forever. 

Ben, meanwhile, had gathered around him a 
half dozen, and, to every one’s surprise, suc- 
cessfully improvised an amateur singing-school. 
He played “Yankee Doodle” on the violin, 
and six lustier pairs of lungs and six happier 
singers than his scholars it would have been 
difficult to find* He played “ Shoo Fly ” and 
all of the street songs that were decent and 
that he knew they could sing, and at length, 
although he had played till his arms ached, he 
* See Frontispiece. 


The Christmas Party. 


19 


asked them to learn a song that he liked, he 
said, and taught them the first two stanzas of 
“ Children of the heavenly King.” Explain- 
ing it by a short abstract from “ Pilgrim’s 
Progress,” of Christiana and her children set- 
ting out to meet Christian, and telling them 
that they might also become just such chil- 
dren, he roused their zeal and so inspired them 
with the reality of life’s journey that they 
fairly made the rooms echo with the line, “ As 
we journey let us sing.” 

The practice was brought to a happy con- 
clusion by the announcement of supper. A 
real dinner it was, for there, before the aston- 
ished eyes of many who had never sat down 
to turkey before, that edible fowl was planted 
at frequent intervals the length of the tables. 
There were, besides, vegetables cooked after a 
more approved recipe than any in Beritie’s 
books. There were baskets of golden oranges 
and ruddy apples, grapes, luscious, round 
and fragrant, and huge pyramids of candy 
containing enough to fill every little pocket. 

Many a wee one sat in its chair, too stupe- 
fied, for the time being, to begin the repast 
to which it did not however fail, after a while, 

to do ample justice. 

2 


20 Boys and Girls. 

The glory of the evening was reserved, how- 
ever, till after the meal. Then, preparatory 
to sending the children home, a Christmas-tree 
was uncovered, a great, branching one, hung 
with the most curious mixture that ever 
Christmas-tree presented. There were suits 
of clothes from whose sleeves protruded such 
mottoes as, “Where is Johnny Green? I be- 
long to him.” “ I wish Billy Blake would try 
me on and see whether I fit.” “ O, Susie 
Buckle, wont you take me home with you to- 
night?” 

In addition to a present that had been care- 
fully selected with reference to the needs of 
each child, there was for every one a package 
of cake that Bentie had herself baked for the 
occasion. When each little one had its pres- 
ent safely folded in its arms, Mr. Winthrop 
said : 

“ Now, my children, you must remember 
that you would not have come here to-night 
and have received these gifts unless the Christ, 
of whom George has told you, had put it into 
our hearts to bring you hither; and, before you 
go, I want you all to kneel with me and repeat 
the prayer that Christ said we were to pray.” 

Sentence by sentence the numerous childish 


The Christmas Party. 


21 


voices repeated: “Our Father, who art in 
heaven,” and then, the sleighs being in readi- 
ness, the little waifs were sent away not only 
with a Christmas in their hands, but in their 
hearts. 

When the last load had departed, and Ben- 
tie with her friends had gathered around the 
library grate, Mr. Winthrop said: 

“ I have a notion, Bentie, to make the 
experiment of the evening something more 
permanent. Every thing, however, depends 
on Mrs. Holmes.” 

The latter looked up in surprise, but said 
heartily: “ I feel more than willing to do any 
thing in my power.” 

Both she and George regarded Bentie and 
her father as the author for them of a new 
and happy existence. 

“ You will have to become a professional 
woman, a Lady Bountiful, a kind of Saint 
Elizabeth,” said Mr. Winthrop, smiling. 
“ Then, too, you will have to become a school 
teacher, a nurse, a police force, and a stew- 
ard.” 

Every body was interested, and Bentie, 
putting her arms around her father’s neck and 
threatening to choke him if he did not cease 


22 


Boys and Girls. 


such mystifying, made believe shake the infor- 
mation from his mouth. 

“Well,” said Mr. Winthrop sententiously 
and making a long pause. 

“ Well,” echoed Bentie imploringly. 

“ It seemed almost cruel to me, while those 
little ones were gathered here to-night, to 
afford them this one glimpse of happy, health- 
ful human existence, and then not to follow it 
up by lessons and helps to something better 
than they meet with in their daily life. So I 
have thought while I have been sitting here 
that I could devote a room, in a building I 
have on one of the business avenues, to Mrs. 
Holmes, provided she would engage to keep 
it filled with from forty to fifty cripples, and 
teach them how to employ their hearts, their 
heads, and their hands. Thus we should have 
all to ourselves a quiet mission, a receptacle 
for good deeds that might otherwise remain 
unperformed, and a constant call upon our 
sympathies and affections. By and by, per- 
haps, we should reach the parents. If we 
reform or even permanently benefit fifty homes, 
it will be one sheaf to present to the Master 
when he questions us about our harvest,” 

Mrs. Holmes’s eyes filled with tears over this 


The Christmas Party. 23 

providential and totally unlooked-for change 
in her prospects, and George, whose heart had 
been so often wrung because of the severe 
manual labor his mother had been obliged to 
perform, spoke his pleasure impulsively and 
enthusiastically. 

Bentie’s gray eyes lighted up, as she said : 
“ I begin to see, papa, O so plainly, what you 
mean by life-problems. Why, one is meeting 
them all the time ; and they are not so diffi- 
cult to solve, are they, if you take them one 
by one?” 

Trot, who had by no means failed to mani- 
fest her usual energy and dignity, looked, just 
at the moment, profoundly thoughtful. Then, 
regarding Mrs. Holmes earnestly, she said : 
“ If you should ever need a physician in your 
school, and I am old enough and wise enough^ 
will you employ me ?” 

Trot’s proposal had so many wise provis- 
ions that Mrs. Holmes immediately promised, 
and then, as it was already late, the Holmeses 
and the Stantons departed, leaving Bentie, 
her father, and Aunt Winifred alone, to watch 
by moonlight the midnight dawning of Christ- 
mas. 


24 


Boys and Girls. 


II. 

THE TWO DECISIONS. 

jh&f RS. HOLMES’S scholars were of various 
JM. ages. Some had high seats, some low, 
and others chairs that seemed the out- 
growth of their bodily constitution. The 
school-room faced front. It had two windows. 
When they were open, with the buzzing of the 
girls and boys’ voices mingled the jingle of 
the bells of the horse-cars, and the roar and 
murmur of the crowded thoroughfare. But, 
as the room was high up, the constancy of the 
noise outside only seemed to heighten the 
hurry of the work inside. This school-room 
was a pleasant place to all; to Abbie and Job 
it was a paradise. 

Ever since the time of George’s talk, Abbie 
had thought much on the great goodness of 
Christ in coming into this world. In many 
ways she had been endeavoring to learn that, 
although she was lame and often hungry, 
yet a hard seat could become soft and an 


The Two Decisions. 


25 


empty stomach less empty if, by doing with- 
out, she made some one else more comforta- 
ble.. Her eyes were not only blue now, but 
they shed a softer, gentler light. 

Job found it difficult to understand that 
once in a while the “ biggest ” and the “ oldest ” 
were first served. It was always with a won- 
dering surprise that he accepted even the com- 
monest attention from Mrs. Holmes. Some- 
times, when Miss Bentie made her appearance 
in the little school-room and, bending over 
him, would solve a problem for him or teach 
him the pronunciation of long words, his de- 
light and gratitude knew no bounds. 

“ It ’pears to me,” he said one day, “ as if 
I were in another world. I do believe, Mrs. 
Holmes, that the wicked one himself would 
find it very hard to show his nature in this 
room.” 

After this speech he quietly settled down 
to his spelling, pounding out each word with 
the one finger left on his right hand ; he had 
lost the others in a saw-mill. For his support 
he sold the morning papers. He spent the 
afternoon and sometimes half the evening over 
his books. The school-room was open as late 
as the most studious desired, and the regular 


26 


Boys and Girls. 


duties concluded so early that none became 
over tired. 

Never before had Job known what it was to 
sit down beside a shaded lamp to study and 
read. Such a luxury was it that, when the 
winter nights were at their longest, he remained 
lost in his books till nine or ten o’clock. Then, 
buttoning up his patched and weather-worn 
overcoat about his sturdy little chin, with a 
good-night to Mrs. Holmes that was invaria- 
bly accompanied by a look of loving admira- 
tion, he would disappear into the darkness. 

Now Bentie found this school one of her 
life-problems. How they were accumulating ! 
Her career as a student was one ; her care for 
her papa’s house made two ; her various de- 
vices for the welfare of Mrs. Holmes’s pupils, 
three; and the trying to discover in just what 
final good these opportunities for usefulness 
would result, four. Then for a fifth were all 
of the other questions that arose from day to 
day. How full and grand were her efforts to 
draw near to Christ in holy living becoming ! 
She felt that her slightest attempt was digni- 
fied, and that each day, each hour, and each 
effort might be filled with a glory that came 
from above. Her faithful watching and work- 


The Two Decisions. 27 

ing began to develop in her a gentle self-re- 
pose and confidence that she had too often 
lacked in critical moments. With what a 
burst of thankfulness she rushed into Aunt 
Winifred’s arms at the close of the school- 
year to relate to her the results of her final ex- 
amination preparatory to college. 

“Auntie, I could no more have done it a 
year ago ! Why, when Ben’s class were un- 
dergoing their last ordeal in a public school, I 
looked upon them as prodigies. I see now 
that it is the training that does it. A girl 
cannot, any more than a boy, sail in deep wa- 
ter unless she paddles her boat through the 
shallows first. There was I, studying rhetoric 
and literature at Madame Riviere’s school, and 
not understanding some of the simplest rules 
of grammar. This year I have risen step by 
step, studying nothing beyond, or only what 
was a little beyond, my comprehension. And, 
auntie, I have grown. I am not a bit afraid 
that I shall fail to pass my preparatory ex- 
amination at college. If there is a battle in 
United States history whose beginning and 
end I cannot recite, a cape from the North 
Pole to the South whose name is not at my 
tongue’s end, or an ordinary problem in arith- 


28 


Boys and Girls. 


metic that I am unable to solve, I am very 
much mistaken. I wish it were time now for 
me to start off. I feel so anxious to settle 
down to the efforts of the next five years.” 

“ A long summer of country life is what 
you need just now. Has your father told 
you of what we and the Stantons propose do- 
ing in a fortnight? ” 

“ Something delightful, I know, if it is con- 
nected with the Stantons. Ben will be home 
from college, too. What is it ? ” 

“ About a fortnight before the camp-meeting 
opens we are going to Green Lake to rusti- 
cate. You have heard your father tell, I am 
sure, of the fine times he had there in shooting 
and fishing.” 

“ Green Lake ! Splendid ! ” 

“ Splendid, Bentie?” asked her aunt, re- 
provingly. 

“ Yes, auntie, splendid. Splendid means 
shining, and I am sure, if we go to Green 
Lake, we shall have a shining, good time ; now 
sha’n’t we ? ” 

Bentie threw her two arms about Aunt 
Winifred’s neck, and, laying her cheek against 
the chiding mouth, continued, “ Such quanti- 
ties of water-lilies as I shall gather, and mosses 


The Two Decisions. 


29 


and ferns ! And, auntie, let us get up some 
morning ever so early and go wading. O, I 
can almost feel the cool, soft water around my 
feet now. I’d like to be a fish or a hobgoblin, 
‘ in shape no bigger than an agate-stone ! ’ No, 
I would be a Queen Mab, and then what an- 
tics I would perform with you all. I’d be in 
the water one minute, pulling your boat to 
the very center of the largest fish-party in the 
lake ; or I would buzz about papa’s k eyes, in 
the form of a gnat, until he put by his reading 
or smoking for a good long talk with his 
daughter. I would do something every min- 
ute of the time to extract the very best out 
of you all. Such a summer and such good 
times ! Ben and I can have no end of fun and 
improvement in collecting specimens. Do 
you suppose, auntie, that Ben will act college- 
fied when he comes home this time? He 
wasn’t a bit so last winter, and yet, as Bridget 
told me, 1 Wasn’t he the perfect pattern of a 
gentleman?’ just like a boy, you know, only 
a great deal nicer. I was thinking this morn- 
ing of the wisdom of God in making us boys 
and girls. There are ways about Ben that I 
like ever so much, and that I haven’t and 
couldn’t have if I tried. They are a constant 


30 


Boys and Girls. 


surprise to me. And then, you know, it is I 
who made Ben first like girls. He says that 
since he has known me he has come to believe 
that they all have common-sense, if boys 
could only learn to find it out. How soon do 
we go? Let’s see, it is now the first of July. 
Why, auntie, only a week before we shall be 
off to the mountains. Hurrah ! ” 

Bentie danced around the room, then, sub- 
siding for a few minutes, presently rose to 
get her “ odds and ends ” together. “ We are 
not to be the least bit fashionable, are we, 
auntie ? ” 

“ Not the very least bit : water-proofs, heavy 
boots, linen dresses, you can get ready in an 
hour ! ” 

“ But the books ! Ben likes to read aloud. 
There are all of those new poems. There, I 
have an idea ; I am going to pack up some re 
torts and other chemical apparatus, and we 
can construct a laboratory in the woods and 
have some grand experiments. If Ben should 
have forgotten old times he will have to 
come back to them when he sees all of my 
fixings.” 

Ben came home from college. 

“ He seems rather quiet, but then I always 


The Two Decisions. 


3i 

did predict that he would grow up dignified,” 
thought Bentie. 

The box for their mutual chemical edifica- 
tion, and which she had taken great pains to 
prepare, was safely stowed away in her trunk, 
somewhat at the risk, however, of the com- 
pactly folded linens and prints. 

Green Lake, a picturesque and peculiar 
body of water situated on one of the numer- 
ous mountains that diversify the northern 
sections of New Jersey, had to be approached 
through an exceedingly rough, wild country. 
The stout conveyance into which our friends 
were crowded careened over stones and ruts, and 
up and down great hills to such an extent that 
the laughing and general merriment increased 
until old and young were in a frolicsome 
gale. 

As the driver paused at the foot of a steep 
road running diagonally up the side of a singu- 
larly even and unbroken range, on whose sum- 
mit was Green Lake, Ben and Bentie sprang 
from the wagon, the latter desirous to equip 
herself at once with piscatorial apparatus. The 
walk was a long and shady one. Falling be- 
hind the carry-all, waiting, indeed, until it was 
out of sight, they chattered, busy as magpies, 


32 


Boys and Girls. 


over the thousand-and-one events with which 
for each the past year had been crowded. 
Ben had many college stories to relate, and, 
assured that Bentie would understand, with 
the same freedom as of old he entered into 
the particulars of his standing in this class, 
how he had worked in that, and how the fel- 
lows rated him. 

It was a chapter of intense interest to her, 
for, although her domestic accomplishments 
had opened up a new life, they had not inter- 
fered in the least with her steady progress in 
school. The regular discipline, the few daily 
studies thoroughly mastered, had seemed to 
rub from our earnest, striving friend the child- 
ish instability she had before manifested. But, 
in addition to regular study and continual ad- 
vancement, pictures and reports of a college 
whose curriculum was in substance identical 
with the one which Ben attended, had roused 
every dormant energy of her nature. Here, 
on the cool and shady mountain, reaching 
up above their heads like the tritely famil- 
iar hill of science, Bentie felt that she too 
must give utterance to her aspirations. So, 
when Ben had actually paused to take breath, 
looking up, she said : 


The Two Decisions. 


33 

“ I have fully decided to go to college in 
the autumn.” 

“ Where ? ” asked Ben eagerly. 

“ To Simpson,” and Bentie looked grave- 
ly at Ben to weigh the effect of her announce- 
ment. 

“ Well, that is the place for you,” replied 
Ben sententiously. “ But, are you fitted to 
enter? ” 

“ I shall have to go as preparatory. There is 
a two years’ course preparatory to the college 
course. I feel quite sure that I can enter as 
high as the second year, though. They say 
that the 4 preps ’ are snubbed unmercifully by 
the collegiates.” 

“Well,” said Ben again, after a pause, “a 
college is a college. If things were made too 
easy for the ‘ preps,’ perhaps, like so many 
institutions for women that have started 
with high-sounding catalogues, this college of 
your choice would degenerate into nothing 
more or less than a seminary. I believe 
Simpson College is thorough and does col- 
lege work, and that is saying a good deal for 
a boy.” 

“ It is not saying any more than you ought, 
if it is the truth,” replied Bentie. 


34 


Boys and Girls. 


“Will you stay to graduate?” asked Ben, 
discreetly overlooking her retort. 

“ Of course, I have learned to believe in 
finishing what I undertake. I would not leave 
the grammar school if I could not go over the 
same ground at college and at the same time 
reach a higher grade. You haven’t changed 
your mind as to how and what girls should 
study, have you, Ben?” 

“Not a bit of it. The more a girl knows 
the better company she is, to say the least ; 
and if a little knowledge makes a boy con- 
ceited while much renders him humble, I do 
not see why the proportions would not have 
the same effect upon a girl. No, Bentie, 
I should really be disappointed in you if 
you did not amount to more than common 
girls.” 

“ Ben, I wish to be just a common girl and 
nothing else ; at least, I shall be satisfied with 
being a common girl. I think very many girls 
now-a-days, according to Aunt Winifred, are 
uncommon know-nothings. I wish to become 
thoroughly competent to manage a house ; I 
have almost learned, Ben. I also wish to have 
my mind so disciplined that, one of these 
days, I shall be able to grasp with my 


The Two Decisions. 


35 

intellect the weightiest thoughts of the pro- 
foundest scholars.” 

“ You are also to be my chemist, you must 
remember,” said Ben. 

“ O, yes, that is understood,” replied Bentie 
quickly, but, at the same time, feeling a thrill 
of delight because Ben had not, after all, for- 
gotten. The two then took quite a review in 
a study which had fallen out of the line of each 
the preceding year. 

Meanwhile they had reached the summit of 
the mountain. After a hearty country dinner, 
served to them in simple farmers’ style, the 
two started with the others to the lake, but 
separated from them again on finding a small, 
light boat unoccupied. 

Ben was an excellent ' oarsman. When he 
had propelled Bentie a mile out into the lake, 
under the shadow of a high rock formation, 
that rose precipitously and reached almost the 
entire length of the northern side of the sheet 
of water, they prepared their fishing-tackle. 
Each remained perfectly silent, intent on the 
depths below, which were vividly green and 
transparent. 

For a long time the fish would not bite. 
But at length, to Bentie’s joy, she raised a 
3 


Boys and Girls. 


36 

dripping, shining pickerel, which Ben de- 
tached and placed in the bottom of the 
boat. Her pickerel began their good fortune, 
for in less than an hour their basket was 
full of fishes of various sizes and motley 
coloring. Then they rowed to the farther 
end of the lake, where water-lilies grew in 
abundance. 

Bentie leaned over the side of the boat, 
floating her hand through the water, and feel- 
ing that life was very smooth and very happy 
on the whole. It was so delightful to pull up 
the long, sinuous stems crowned each one with 
a starry flower showing through bursting 
green leaves milky white petals and dimly, far 
within, golden centers. Over the water were 
the long branches of willows and birches ; rank 
and green and fragrant shrubs grew close to- 
gether in the soft, black earth, and formed a 
home for myriad birds singing and hopping 
and cooing as Bentie and Ben sat talking and 
rocking in the water-lily bed. 

“ Ben,” said Bentie, “ there is one point 
about which I wish to speak to you, and that is 
Church membership. Papa persuaded me not 
to unite with the Church until I had had time 
to fully decide whether I could be a whole- 


The Two Decisions. 


37 

hearted Methodist. Half-way members did 
more harm than good.” 

“ What have you decided ? ” asked Ben, 
while he washed his hand back and forth 
through the water. 

“ I have decided to join the Church ; and I 
can do it, Ben, with my heart and with my 
mind. I can make a full, hearty promise to all 
the questions put to those desiring member- 
ship. I have wanted several times to ask 
you whether you could not join at the same 
time.” 

“ I could assent to all the questions put, so 
far as regards belief,” he answered, “ but for 
two reasons I do not care to make a public 
profession. First, if I did, I do not believe I 
would have as much actual influence with a 
certain set of boys in college ; and, secondly, 
I do not care to bind myself to promises such 
as Church members make. If I assumed those 
vows, I should want to live up to them, and, 
Bentie, I do not meet with more than one in 
a hundred who does. If it is sinful to keep 
out of the Church, it is still more so to bring 
discredit upon the Church.” 

“ I thought you were more brave, Ben,” said 
Bentie, in a tone of gentle reproach. “ Can 


38 


Boys and Girls. 


you not live, at least ought you not to try to 
live, up to principle, irrespective of what others 
do ? It is the effort and not the actual deed, 
in God’s sight, you know.” 

“ It is not a question of bravery or coward- 
ice with me,” - said Ben, coloring. “ It is com- 
mon sense. There is human nature in every 
one of us. I know that I have my full share. 
Can I do what hundreds of others have failed 
to do? I do not mean to work the less; I 
only mean not to put myself up for inspection. 
Besides, you do not know how unbearable I 
find these good people who are always giving 
advice which they never follow themselves. 
They abound in the Church.” 

“ Of course,” replied Bentie ; “ but there 
is another sort of Christianity that also 
abounds. You need not follow all the advice 
given you. As well, Ben, as you are able to 
help yourself, you would, I believe, find a 
great assistance in the strength of united 
forces. Your chemistry teaches you sufficient 
about that. I think that, as loving Christ above 
every thing in heaven or earth, you should 
not question a moment whether you may for 
any length of time separate your influence 
from the recognized body of our Lord’s fol- 


The Two Decisions. 


39 


lowers. Duty seems to me very plain as re- 
gards this point. A few united can accom- 
plish, either in influence or work, what one per- 
son could never do. Please join the Church 
when I do, Ben.” 

Ben rocked the boat back and forth, looking 
so irresolute that Bentie was encouraged to 
renew her entreaties. At length, looking up 
with tears in his eyes, he said : 

“You are right, and I am wrong, Bentie. 
We will join the Church together.” 

She felt very thankful and happy ; and Ben, 
now that he had really decided to do what his 
conscience had long ago urged as his duty, 
felt as if a great weight had been lifted from 
his mind. 

Meanwhile, on the day that Ben and Bentie 
were settling a question of duty made easier 
by years of generous and Christian home- 
culture and a wise provision for their neces- 
sities, as well as many of their mere fancies, 
George Holmes was driving merchandise 
through parched and dusty streets. The July 
sun shed hot, scorching rays, burning the pave- 
ments, reddening the faces of pedestrians, and 
making man and beast perspire profusely. 
All the morning, and half-way through the 


40 


Boys and Girls. 


afternoon, George had tugged and lifted and 
driven ; now, when the last breath of air had 
died away, and that intense heat which reigns 
between two and four o’clock seemed too hot 
to endure, he reached the warehouse just in 
time to confront a new arrival of boxes and 
bales. His head was throbbing; his hands 
were aching. But, as long as he had worked 
for Mr. Winthrop, his whole soul bent on suc- 
cess, he had never once wavered, never once 
complained, so that, young as he was, his em- 
ployer placed implicit confidence in his in- 
tegrity and willingness. 

As George drove up, Mr. Winthrop, who 
was to join his family on the morrow, looked 
with admiration on the boy’s fine, determined 
face, his manly, sensitive mouth, and wished 
he were his son. 

“ I wish the goods had stayed out of town 
for a day for your sake, George,” he said, 
good-naturedly, as, in his shirt sleeves and 
with his hat on the back of his head, George 
proceeded to load. 

“ The most of the day is over,” replied the 
boy, cheered by Mr. Winthrop’s tones as much 
as by his words. But he wondered whether 
the hot night would leave him strength to 


The Two Decisions. 


4i 


pursue studies which he had continued with 
unremitting diligence during the evenings 
after his day’s work was done. 

It was up-hill work; but in the fall he 
had set his teeth together and vowed that, by 
some means or other, he would keep pace 
with Ben. When the summer vacation came, 
comparing notes with the latter, he found 
himself a month behind. So there was noth- 
ing to do but to devote his July evenings to 
work. “ All of August would be free,” he 
told his mother, when she expostulated with 
him. Day and night work together imparted 
to his eyes a restless brightness and lines 
prematurely grave to his young face. “ Death 
or victory,” was the desperate motto he had 
taken to shape his career. To one looking at 
him on these sultry evenings as he sat ab- 
sorbed in study, it might well have been a 
question as to which side the mastery would 
eventually belong. 

As Mr. Winthrop watched the boy’s slight 
but wiry frame quiver under the heavy 
boxes, a fatherly impulse seized him. Hur- 
riedly dropping his linen coat, before George 
could remonstrate, he was at the boy’s side, 
assisting him in loading his wagon. It was 


42 


Boys and Girls. 


a new sight to many of the clerks to see 
their employer take hold of the work in that 
style, and for George it was the prelude to 
a conversation that sent him home with such 
a throbbing heart and brain that, do all he 
could, Greek and Latin mingled together so 
confusedly in his thoughts that he was obliged 
to lay his books aside. But he slept a sound, 
dreamless sleep, and awoke with such an ex- 
ultant, proud, victorious feeling that labor and 
success, as its result, seemed more than pos- 
sible. 

After his wagon had been loaded and he 
had returned, according to the order, upon 
the delivery of the goods, he went to Mr. 
Winthrop’s office, where he found his employer 
awaiting him with something of the eagerness 
of an impatient father. 

“ George,” said Mr. Winthrop, “ it is specula- 
tors who nowadays make money, is it not ? ” 

“ A great many of them do,” replied the boy 
wonderingly, 

“ If I should enter into a speculation, would 
you help me ? ” asked his employer with spark- 
ling eyes. 

George looked at him for an instant, and, 
feeling the genial cordiality breathing from 


The Two Decisions. 


43 

every feature of Mr. Winthrop’s countenance, 
replied: 

“ If there is money in it, sir.” 

“ I think there is ; in fact, I believe there is 
a fortune in it for you. What do you think 
of that ? ” 

“ What do I think of that ? ” asked George 
breathlessly ; “ I think I would go to college.” 

Mr. Winthrop laughed out and, patting 
George on the shoulder, replied: “You have 
named the nucleus of the fortune I intend you 
shall have. Listen to my speculation. I have 
no sons of my own, as you know, and so the 
next best thing for me to do is to take an 
honest pleasure in the sons, especially the tal- 
ented sons, of other people.” 

George flushed rosy at this unexpected com- 
pliment. 

“ I have a few hundred dollars lying idle,” 
continued Bentie’s father, “ and for several 
weeks I have been looking for a trustworthy 
person to whom to lend them. Suppose you 
borrow them of me for an indefinite term of 
years, at six per cent, interest, and go through 
college. How long would it take you?” 

“ Three years, sir,” replied George, his heart 
almost choking him as the possibility of just 


44 


Boys and Girls. 


such a future as he had longed for burst upon 
his vision. “ Only three years, sir, for I have 
almost kept up with Ben Stanton’s first year, 
by private study. But the risks, sir.” 

“ O, there are risks in every great specula- 
tion. My share of the risk is in seeing wheth- 
er you come out with flying colors ; your share 
is in dying before you accomplish your purpose, 
and being, in consequence, unable to cancel 
the debt. Do you agree ? ” 

“ I believe I do, sir,” replied George, “ but 
I think I will go home first and talk things 
over with mother. We are all in all to each 
other, you know, Mr. Winthrop.” 

“ God bless you for remembering your 
mother!” and Mr. Winthrop’s eyes moist- 
ened. 

George’s home is somewhat different from 
the attic to which we first presented our read- 
ers. What with his wages and his mother’s 
salary as teacher of the novel but successful 
school Mr. Winthrop originated, they have 
been enabled to rent a flat in a modest but 
clean neighborhood, and to have plenty of 
good air and water. 

To see Mrs. Holmes now, at the expiration 
of the first school year, one would hardly be- 


The Two Decisions. 


45 


lieve her to be the same woman. Her hair is, 
indeed, snowy white, but her face, which is by 
no means old, has such a happy, contented 
expression — the lines have become so reduced 
through an abundance of sleep, rest, and 
wholesome food — that she really appears ten 
years younger. She sits by her third-story 
window looking toward the distant corner 
around which George always makes his first 
appearance. To-night, as he draws nearer and 
nearer, her face lights into the proudest, hap- 
piest smile, and the memory of the bitter, bit- 
ter past seems like a dream before the future 
of her manly son. 

What has happened, however, to take all of 
the premature solemnity from her boy’s face, 
and cause him to swing his hat toward her 
window in such a wild, happy way? She 
rises from her chair, goes out into the hall, can- 
not wait for him to mount the three flights of 
stairs, and so meets him half way. He puts 
his arm around her waist and they climb the 
stairs together. So soon as they are in their 
own little dining room she clasps her hands 
around George’s neck and says, “ Do tell me 
what it is, my son.” 

George drew a more graphic picture than we 


46 


Boys and Girls. 


can hope to do of his interview with Mr. 
Winthrop, and made his mother laugh till the 
tears ran down her cheeks, over the novel 
terms of the speculation, and concluded with, 
“ Can you spare me, mother, and shall I go ? ” 
“ Go ? a hundred times go ! I begin to see 
an answer to my years of prayer. Go, if it is 
only for a year. You will yet wipe away the 
stain your father left upon your infancy, and 
prove the fact that every American boy makes 
his own birthright.” 


Bentie’s College. 


4 7 


III. 

BENTIE’S COLLEGE. 

f EPTEMBER has come once more; that 
spicy, changeful month that brings to 
New York State almost as many showers 
as does April. There are two of our friends in 
whom even the first day awakens a thrill and 
anticipation, for this month begins their col- 
lege career. So much has been said about the 
institution whither George followed Ben, that 
we will accompany Bentie, as she “goes up,” 
as college boys say, to pass her examinations. 

Would you like a picture of Bentie, as she 
appears now ? And by and by another, when 
we are invited to see her graduate? for our 
Bentie is going to graduate. 

She is very much like every other girl, and 
yet she is so much like herself that I do not 
suppose you would think of paying her that 
common compliment we all receive, of bearing 
“ such a striking resemblance to my friend so 
and so.” 


48 


Boys and Girls. 


Most healthy girls are plump. In that re- 
spect Bentie is like other girls; and yet she 
has a curious way of looking so small that 
many call her slender ; she is round and com- 
pact — that is all. She is also tall, only, you 
do not know that she is, until you come to 
stand beside her; another curious point, you 
will say. It is because she is symmetrical. 
Then she is like an aspen leaf as regards mo- 
tion — here when you think she is there, and 
there when you think she is here. She has 
her gray eyes still, of course ; but what I 
meant to say is, her gray eyes have their baby 
expression. They are not hard, wise, bold 
eyes; but, whether it is their shape, or their 
lashes, or their expression, you only see 
enough of them at a time to make you wish 
to see more. What you do see (at least, so 
her eyes affect me) makes you think of those 
shady vistas in pine woods carpeted with silver- 
gray moss through which the mellow sunshine 
strikes athwart. I think, any way, don’t you ? 
that one sort of gray eyes is like a rainbow ; 
it seems to contain every color, and changes 
every instant, so that if one looks away a 
moment, he seems to have lost something. 
Bentie has a great deal of color, too ; it mot- 


Bentie’s College. 


49 


ties her hands and her arms so that they are 
oftentimes pink and white ; it creeps along her 
cheeks as far as her ears, and plays tag around 
her chin and up to the roots of her hair, and, 
in short, comes and goes, as she does herself, 
in the most unexpected places and at the most 
unexpected times ; but, like herself, it is so 
quiet, that you wonder whether she ever makes 
any noise. She has two rows of shining, even 
teeth, all her own, and she has a mass of 
chestnut hair that is almost red at times; it 
would be quite, if some people, and they tell 
the truth, did not call it golden hair also. 
And she has — how shocking ! some of you 
will say — but she really has large hands and 
feet. But if you once felt the touch of Ben- 
tie’s hand, if you notice hand-touches at all, 
you would say she had a beautiful hand. It 
is a soft, firm, gentle hand ; when she takes 
yours you not only feel her finger-tips, but 
you feel her whole hand ; and, when she picks 
up a book, or a pie, or a broom, that large, 
white, firm hand looks as though it could 
carry the book, the pie, or the broom. She 
wears fours in boots — yes, she does; but she 
has a high instep, so high and so arched that, 
as old nurses say, in telling whether one is of 


50 


Boys and Girls. 


aristocratic birth, the water will run under it 
without wetting it ; and Bentie is of aristo- 
cratic birth, for, like every American girl, she 
was born a queen. Perhaps she might squeeze 
her foot into “ threes,” the orthodox number; 
but she has a horror of bent toes and a right- 
eous fear of those little, hard, yellow spots — 
do you know what I mean ? — that some- 
times appear on the feet of girls who try to 
compress the healthy flesh, muscles and bones, 
which ought to carry them majestically through 
the world. 

Do you believe what I wish to make you 
believe, that Bentie Winthrop is physically, 
what is too rare among Americans, a truly 
healthy girl? If you do, then you can under- 
stand that when the carriage which bore her 
and her father passed under the arched gate- 
way guarding the entrance to the college 
grounds, she could not feel a bit afraid. 

We will leave her now, for a few minutes, in 
order to take a survey of the spot where she 
is to live for the next five years, and whose 
every nook she will, long before that time will 
have expired, have learned to know by heart. 

There is a farm of two hundred acres, of 
which just enough is reserved to supply the 


Bentie’s College. 


5i 


college table with vegetables, fruits, milk and 
butter. It is situated on elevated ground, but 
apparently forms* a portion of a vast plain, be- 
cause of the circle of mountains by which it is 
surrounded. To the north rise the Catskills, 
which in the winter, with their crowns of 
snow touched by sunshine, look like kings. 
To the north-east are the Shawangunks, which 
in the morning light up with more wonderful 
opal and sapphire tints than any mountains I 
have ever seen. To the south are the Fishkill 
Mountains, steep, as seen from the college, 
and purple and cool. Directly in front — the 
college faces east and west — are lesser mount- 
ains, and at the rear rises Sunset Hill, precip- 
itous, round and barren. Immediately sur- 
rounding the college are seventy-five acres, 
reserved for a park and laid out in long and 
graceful lawns and drives and walks. The 
crowning feature of the park is a circle a mile 
in circumference and completely surrounded 
by flower-beds, kept in order by those of the 
students who constitute the floral society. 

Not far from the flower-circle is the observ- 
atory, which, from the time a girl first enters 
the college, is a place of interest and of much 
curiosity. In November, when stars are ex- 
4 


Boys and Girls. 


52 

pected to fall, during eclipses, when any thing, 
in fact, is going on in the sky that does not 
happen there every day, a few who under- 
stand telescopes and astronomical clocks and 
stars, suns, moons, comets, etc., gather at night, 
on the observatory roof. A lady professor, 
for whom her scholars cherish the most un- 
bounded love and admiration, is there to di- 
rect their observations. She is just like a girl 
among them, and yet, at the same time, she is 
a cultured, genial, dignified woman. 

If you ever visit Bentie’s college, be sure to 
obtain a peep of the observatory, of its little 
flower-garden in the rear, and to pause on a 
ridge, which the professor of astronomy says is 
exactly the height of the Tarpeian rock as it is 
to-day. All this, however, will be nothing, if 
you do not look into the wonderfully tender, 
honest brown eyes, and see the thick, gray 
curls and motherly smile of her who inevitably 
by her very presence and knowledge inspires 
those who study with her to more fervent, 
scholarly effort than they might otherwise make. 

Now we will walk toward the east, descend 
a sloping ridge, cross a narrow, quiet brook, 
and enter upon a woodland path along which, 
in autumn, the chestnuts and leaves fall brown 


Bentie’s College. 


53 


and thick, and across which is spanned a ro- 
mantic bridge, whence discouraged students, I 
dare say, contemplate suicide. Walking far- 
ther on, we find that the path leads us down 
a hill, across another bridge which has for a 
railing on one side a rough, farm fence ; thence 
up Sunset Hill, whose eastern side is planted 
with fruit-trees and from whose summit art- 
students make sketches of the hills beyond 
the river, elocution students shout to the val- 
ley below and the sky above, and girls who 
have discovered a wonderful affinity view the 
sunset, the college, the riding-school, and each 
other. 

From Sunset Hill look across the park, be- 
yond the lodge, across the road, into the gar- 
den, a long, somewhat narrow strip of ground, 
and where delicious strawberries, grapes, and 
succulent vegetables grow. Do you catch 
through the thick, drooping branches of the 
willows a glimpse of water ? That is the lake, 
once a neglected mill-pond, now deepened, 
lengthened, and occupied by a fleet of row 
boats by means of which the girls increase 
their muscles to an almost incredible extent. 
A very picturesque sheet of water it is ; sur- 
rounded by a walk which on the west is sep- 


54 


Boys and Girls. 


arated from the garden by a steep, velvety 
terrace, and on the east is shaded by trees 
that grew years and years before the college 
existed. 

The grounds are beautiful, you say, but, as I 
expected, you ask what induced an architect 
to plan such a curious-looking building to in- 
close the irrepressible spirits of four hundred 
ambitious, wide-awake girls. 

I really cannot tell. These prim turrets 
north and south do appear as though they 
might belong to the Escurial gridiron of Phil- 
ip II. of Spain ; and that dome in the center, 
with its flat appearance, as if it were an extin- 
guisher ready to quench every flame of genius 
that threatened to ignite anywhere under its 
spacious interior! But just ascend this eco- 
nomical and Dutch flight of steps leading to 
the front entrance. As soon as you are in 
Simpson College you will think it one of the 
most peculiar, but one of the most cheerful, 
edifices you ever entered. Its stairs and its 
halls or corridors are uncarpeted, but they are 
of the finest cedar and oiled ; the former are 
exceedingly wide and sloping, the latter are 
five hundred feet long, and broad enough for 
two columns of promenaders to pass with ease. 


Bentie’s College. 


55 


Off the second story corridor opens a suite 
of three parlors, furnished so tastefully and ele- 
gantly that the wealthiest or most refined may 
feel that she has brought home with her, and 
the poorest or most awkward that she is where 
she can be molded by the softening influ- 
ences of beauty and taste. 

The rooms for recitation are scattered 
throughout the great building; every one is 
large, airy, and comfortably seated. There 
are philosophical and chemical laboratories, 
there are large and valuable collections of 
birds, extensive geological and paleontological 
cabinets, a chapel carpeted and cushioned, an 
art-gallery, and for every five students a suite, 
consisting of three bedrooms and a parlor. 

These are some of the material surround- 
ings and appointments of a college where girls 
are mentally disciplined, as are boys at Yale, 
Harvard, Middletown, etc., and where they 
are, at the same time, trained to healthful 
habits by regular hours for retiring, a diet in 
which meat and Graham bread pre-eminently 
appear, and by sound, religious education. 

Bentie and her father are ushered into a 
parlor, and are presently accosted by a tall 
lady in black silk. Her silvery curls and ani- 


Boys and Girls. 


56 

mated blue eyes at once attract the attention 
of visitors. She is the lady Principal, and on 
this, the opening day of the college, is fully 
engrossed in assigning new students examina- 
tion papers and in attending to the statements 
of parents. 

Bentie is presently given her paper and, with 
a bevy of girls with similar documents, leaves 
the parlor, and, according to written directions, 
repairs to room H, where sits a professor with 
eye-glasses and a look as if room H were filled 
full of invisible Greek and Latin books. Ben- 
tie now begins to feel a tremor creep down 
her arms and communicate with her finger- 
tips, which become suddenly cold. Her mouth 
discovers a mysterious propensity to twitch. 
But, notwithstanding, she stands the test of 
Latin Grammar, elementary prose composi- 
tion, and Caesar, sufficiently well to have 
cabalistic signs put upon the piece of paper in 
her hand, and which she finds admits her to 
the second preparatory Latin. United States 
history, grammar, arithmetic, geography, all 
of the primary studies are overcome in tri- 
umph. 

“ In chemistry, think of it, Ben ! ” she writes, 
“ the examiner told me that I must have had 


Bentie’s College. 


5 7 

superior instruction. There is a feather for 
your cap. I told him that my teacher was a 
practical chemist, and he looked up impressed, 
and said, ‘Ah, indeed,’ and wished to know 
your name. I could not resist saying, Professor 
Stanton, which is no story, by the way, for 
not long ago I became concerned about the 
exact meaning of professor, and, I assure you, 
the term from usage has come to be applied 
to almost any one of the masculine gender 
who teaches. So I, you see, as I taught my- 
self, am professor of cooking rice and beets.” 

“ I asked this gentleman with the eye-glasses 
whether he had ever heard of you, and he said, 

‘ It strikes me that I have.’ Strikes , I find, is 
a college term. They say here, ‘ That strikes 
me as fine.’ ‘ Represented a striking thought* 

‘ The comparison is certainly very striking.' 
What would your authority, Richard Grant 
White, have to say, I wonder, about such a 
use of the word ? Write him. 

“ Although as far as mere book knowledge 
is concerned, I came out in chemistry with 
flying colors, still I am going to study it here 
at some future time. O Ben, you must visit 
my college in order to see the beautiful rows 
on rows of bottles, retorts, and things in the 


53 


Boys and Girls. 


laboratory. And I hear that there is no end to 
the private experimenting done by the students. 
And such a library as there is ! I am goingto 
plan my hours for study ever so economically, 
in order to go to that great, booky, sunshiny 
room to read. Since I have been here I 
have been too glad for any thing that I was 
born a girl. The talk we had together over 
thoroughness, long ago, it seems now — do you 
remember it? — how you made me see that 
studying to know , not studying to seem , was 
what I needed. Here such a method seems 
the most natural course in the world to 
pursue. 

“ How could any one, not a stupid \ live in 
this beautiful, cleanly, immensely roomy 
house — it does seem like a house, a house , al- 
though it is truly a college — and come out a 
sham ? Ben, to-day, a dozen times, whenever 
I have thought of that finishing school of which 
I was once a member, I have drawn a long 
breath, I felt so choky. 

“ Now I must close ; but, before I do, I say — 
and every single letter is in italics— I am in 
love with Simpson College ; and, although I 
am only a second preparatory, called, in every- 
day language, “ second Prep,”— -■ this in infinites- 


Bentie’s College. 


59 

imally small letters — I am going to fight it out 
on the Simpson-College line until I graduate. 
Write ‘ graduate,’ as ‘Sheridan's Ride’ says, 
‘ in letters both bold and bright.’ ” 

When sunset of examination day came, 
Bentie’s father, a proud and happy man, was 
on his way to New York ; his “ girl ” was “ in,” 
while some poor things from away out West 
were “ out.” “ Could not even be ‘ first pre- 
paratories,’ although they had graduated from 
Madame Somebody’s,” he told Aunt Winifred, 
with whom he was going to reside until Bentie 
graduated. 

Bentie, meanwhile, was setting her room in 
order. Do you know what that means, at 
least at Simpson College? 

In a single room there is a wardrobe, a tall, 
rather narrow piece of furniture, but having a 
most capacious top. On this top, about the 
middle of the term, may be seen the motleyest 
variety of boxes and newspapers. The friends 
of Simpson students have a mania for sending 
the homesick ones newspapers. They blandly 
take it for granted that the college is non est 
in daily reading matter, with which, however, 
it is amply supplied. Thus it is that stacks of 
weighty metropolitan papers meet an igno- 


6o 


Boys and Girls. 


minious fate on the wardrobe summits. Be- 
side the wardrobe stands a wash-stand of 
chestnut ; at right angles with it — the single 
rooms, such as Bentie’s, are either pentagons or 
parallelograms — is a chestnut bureau, and op- 
posite the bureau is a single spring bed, fur- 
nished with a good hair mattress, a pillow, 
and wholesome blankets, sheets, and counter- 
panes. No old-fashioned, soggy quilts disfig- 
ure Simpson College beds. 

Bentie had a large room at home, and this 
exceedingly small one, although the ceiling is 
eleven feet high, was a problem. 

Throwing the wardrobe door wide open, 
she began a systematic piling of boxes on its 
one inner shelf. Like most school-girls, she 
had been a month in collecting boxes in which 
to store away articles, and had brought no less 
than twenty, for each of which, I have not a 
doubt, my girl readers could find an immediate 
use. 

By dint of twisting and pulling she had suc- 
ceeded in moving one of her trunks, for the 
time being, into the little room. Then, locking 
the door and sitting down beside her ark, she 
indulged in shedding tears over every article 
she took out. Reaching, at length, at the 


Bentie’s College. 


6i 


bottom of the trunk, her father’s pleasant sur- 
prises in the shape of bon-bons, fruit, and nuts, 
she threw herself, with one long wail, on her 
pillow, and cried as if her heart would break, 
over — she did not know what. 

But Bentie, as you know, is so sunshiny 
in her nature, that she directly began to wipe 
her tears away and forget all of her troubles 
for a whole hour, while packing drawers and 
wardrobe and giving extra peeps into the 
twenty boxes to see that every thing was all 
right. 

After awhile a new girl rapped at her 
door — some one who says that “I am so 
home-sick I don’t know what to do,” and 
wants to know whether she can come in. 
Before she goes out she knows how many 
sacks Bentie has, what her father’s business 
is, and whether our friend intends to gradu- 
ate. She tells, in return, what dresses she has 
brought, in how much doubt her mamma was 
as to whether party costumes would be re- 
quired, and that she expects to receive a* 
box from each one of her six particular 
friends. 

Then they discuss the examinations, and 
think some of them “ perfectly dreadful ” and 


62 


Boys and Girls. 


others very easy. At length, when the retir- 
ing-bell rings, they are engaged to go to walk 
together the next day and are on the direct 
road to an intimacy. While walking they 
overhear two Seniors say that it is a great 
misfortune for Simpson College that Preps 
live under the same roof with Seniors. 

“I consider,” said one, “that it detracts 
from the tone of the college.” 

Bentie and her friend look at each other in 
blank amazement, and from that minute, for 
several days, have an uncomfortably in-the- 
way feeling. 

“ I have another problem, a ’live one so far 
as I am concerned, if not a ’live one,” Bentie 
wrote her father soon after. “ Please give me 
a definition of * tones,’ and why Preps gener- 
ally are superfluities? I have another title 
now. I am an Exoteric .” 

As Bentie’s letters explain themselves, an- 
swering in time all the questions that they ask, 
we will set aside Mr. Winthrop’s more staid 
replies and continue our extracts : 

“ This is a queer place, papa. It is by no 
means a finishing school or a graded school. 
In the first, there was, as is said here, too lit- 
tle machinery, and in the second, too much. 


Bentie’s College. 


63 


Things have to work right at Simpson because 
of the ‘ tones/ which I have found out are the 
public opinions of the college. There are 
senior tones and Junior tones, and so on, way 
down to Prep tones. The latter, dear papa — 
and it is so snubbing to an aspiring girl like 
your Bentie — are invariably food for comment, 
from the President to the Preps themselves, 
whose views, I will . say, are quite different 
from the President’s. I used to think I was 
intelligent and advanced ; but we Preps are 
watched just as if we were the specimens of 
which Darwin had been in quest. ‘We are 
developing, or we will develop, or we wont 
develop,’ is said, according as a case is more 
or less promising. Having thought of this 
subject one night, just before falling asleep, I 
awoke suddenly about midnight, imagining 
myself in one of the cabinets with the monk- 
eys. Think of my horror ! 

“ Now it is a Senior tone to dispense with 
‘slang’— something, dear papa, thanks to you 
and Aunt Winifred, that I seldom employ. I 
do wonder whether you can guess what is 
comprised in the ‘ slang ’ of a Senior of Simp- 
son College. If Preps ‘ dote ’ on each other, 
or if they have ‘ racking ’ headaches, or see 


64 Boys and Girls. 

1 angelic countenances, or are 1 perfectly de- 
lighted ’ to kiss in the corridors, or walk in 
the corridors and up the stair-cases ‘ literally 
hugging * each other, as a Senior said, all this 
constitutes slang in words or actions. When 
these things occur reverend Seniors look 
amused and whisper ‘ Prepdom. 

“ Papa, without hyperbole, it is almost an- 
nihilating, and I really ache to advance high 
enough to at least see the summit of the sub- 
lime heights of seniority. 

“ Now the worst of this letter is, dear, dear 
papa, that if a Senior saw it she would say, 

4 Prepish ; * but you wont, will you ?” 
***** 

“ In my last I told you a little about tones. 
One of the professors revealed the mystery of 
the meaning of this word to Prepdom after 
some sentimental girl had risen in class and 
had demurred about reciting. ‘ Professor/ 
she said, 1 it is absolutely impossible for me 
to recite — really it is ! I get so nervous/ O, 
before I proceed — a foreign teacher here says 
that ‘ De Americans are de fooniest people, 
dat if a mudder have a foolish child and she 
wish oders to tink her smart, she say, she is 
only nervous. No matter what ails the bodies 


Bentie’s College. 65 

or de brains or de souls of de Americans, dey 
are only nervous.’ 

“ The professor gravely regarded the young 
lady, who, while his gaze continued, said twice, 
but the second time fainter than the first, ‘ I 
really can’t.’ He replied, ‘You can never be- 
come a Senior so long as you manifest such 
nervousness and such inability over nothing. 
We shall consider you, if this continues, either 
physically or intellectually deformed.’ 

“ If she had been feeble, papa, it would have 
been different ; but she is a girl who makes 
more noise and disturbance than any other 
Prep in college. 

“ Now Senior tone means the higher in the 
course a student is, common-sense and a pur- 
pose, an ideal, as one of the lady teachers 
says. ‘ The most truly poetical and idealistic 
people in the world,’ she remarked, ‘ are the 
most practical.’ The more I think her remark 
over the better I like it. 

“ Freshmen do not embrace in public nearly 
so much as poor Preps ; Sophomores (though 
fools) have fewer intimate friends than Fresh- 
men. Why, I heard a Freshman tell a new- 
comer — in real earnest she was, too — that she 
had but thirteen intimate friends last year. 


66 


Boys and Girls. 


It does not seem to me that a Prep could have 
been more foolish. Seniors, at least many of 
them, I notice, seem to have no intimate 
friends. Those who do have such a possession 
show their preferences by more frequent com- 
panionship, conversation, and study together, 
than by exclamations over each other’s per- 
fections, physical and otherwise. 

“ Simpson is really a strange school, papa. 
I do not believe that there is another like it 
in the world. But I am wandering quite from 
the subject, ‘ tones,’ about which I wish to 
speak fully. Now, the reason that Preps are 
kept on one floor, out of the regular college 
societies, and in the same classes, is — O papa, 
think of it ! although many of us are at least 
as old as some Sophomores — because, in nurs- 
ery parlance, we do not know how to behave 
ourselves. We are not even allowed a voice 
in the deliberations of the students* associa- 
tion, an organization composed only of Col- 
legiates ; and, much less, participation in the 
exercises of the Philobethean Society, whose 
object is literary improvement. As we are so 
immature in mental discipline, and consequent- 
ly unfit to form proper business, literary, or 
other estimates on many important matters 


Bentie’s College. 


67 

essential to ‘ regular-course ’ proceedings, we 
have formed a society of our own. Its title 
is Exoteric, which means barred out. 

“ In all home comforts and conveniences, in 
the use of parlors and opportunities for lect- 
ures, etc., the Preps have equal advantages 
with the Seniors. But they are made to feel, 
and do feel, like children for whom higher 
privileges are held in reserve. 

“ The funniest part of it all is, that after a 
few weeks, the most spirited and rebellious 
Prep accepts her position, and honors the 
Seniors as representatives of something which 
wealth, position, beauty, cannot give, and that 
is, scholarly ability and general culture. 

“ I want, above all things, dear papa, to re- 
main until I shall have passed out of a Prep 
existence into the highest grade of a Colle- 
giate. So you must not grow weary in well- 
doing in keeping me at college. If you wont, 
one of these days I will make home a hun- 
dred times more attractive than I could other 
wise do. 

“ Good-night, papa darling. 


5 


“ Bentie.” 


68 


Boys and Girls. 


IV. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


EORGE, meanwhile, entered upon his 
duties with just as much enthusiasm as 
did Bentie upon hers. His nature was 
quieter, less impulsive. Determination, how- 
ever, was written on every feature. 

He passed his examinations successfully, 
and, to Ben’s admiration, his mother’s pride, 
and his own joy, he entered unconditioned 
Sophomore. In a month he had taken his 
stand with both students and professors as a 
boy of promise. 

In connection with a score of others, Ben 
and George formed members of a debating so- 
ciety whose meetings, held fortnightly, were 
eagerly anticipated and prepared for through- 
out the year with unremitting energy. 

As we must hasten over many of the details 
in the lives of the girls and boys portrayed in 
this series, we will pass to the close of the year, 
to the last meeting of the “ Champion De- 


The Temptation. 69 

baters,” in whose society George and Ben took 
an active part. 

The meetings were held in the evening. 

It is an exceedingly rainy night. Although 
the streets are muddy and the champions have 
some distance to walk to reach their hall, 
nothing daunted, they are all present to hear 
or participate in the debate on the question, 
“ Resolved, That the United States are des- 
tined to become a Monarchy.” 

Ben, as might be expected, was president 
of the society. There was about him, as 
my readers have inferred, that which made 
him, wherever he went, a leader. His sense 
of order, his power of self-control, his readi- 
ness in always saying the right thing at the 
right time, and the broad and gentle home 
culture by which he had been molded from 
his infancy, were all so many forces which he 
had to use above the average boy. George 
Holmes found himself in daily friction with 
these advantages, which were due largely to 
birth and fortune ; but, although Ben Stanton 
was in every social aspect his superior, he felt 
that intellectually he had no rival. 

Ben was a Christian ; George was not. Both 
boys were, however, human. Ben, with all 


7 ° 


Boys and Girls. 


of his popularity, scholarly standing, and 
countless home blessings, saw that in George 
Holmes which made him feel that his humble 
friend would eventually eclipse him. This 
thought rasped his spirit. “ First best ” 
seemed to him the only goal worth reaching. 
The tempter came to him more than once, 
saying: “ If it had not been for your kindness 
Holmes would never have been here to contest 
with you for the honors.” Many a night he 
wrestled in prayer over the envy which re- 
peatedly filled his heart, as day by day he saw 
George steadily rising in the esteem of the 
faculty. Over and over he said to himself : 
“ If a thing is good only by comparison, it is 
worth nothing to me; I will be what I can, 
and do what I can, and admire with a glad 
heart whatever is excellent in others.” It 
was this thought which animated him as he 
rose from his knees previously to leaving his 
room for the debating society. 

Crossing the hall to his rival’s apartment, 
he found George intent upon the debate. The 
latter welcomed him cordially, and then, mo- 
tioning him to a seat, said : 

“ Wait just a few minutes, I want to get a 
point clear.” 


The Temptation. 


7i 


Ben sat down and watched George walk up 
and down the room, resolving evidently a per- 
plexing question, for his brows were contracted 
and looked black and heavy above his deep, 
earnest eyes. His lips, set together, betrayed 
the iron will of their possessor. The compe- 
tition with boys of advanced standing, and 
opportunity to turn the whole strength of his 
mind on study, had called forth a self-asser- 
tion that had remained latent in his more un- 
fortunate days. As his firm step beat quickly 
and nervously upon the bare floor of his room, 
and his arm involuntarily gesticulated to the 
argument he was framing, Ben, true to his 
highest nature, forgot himself completely, and 
from the bottom of his heart was glad that 
God had used him as an instrument to widen 
his companion’s career. 

When George announced himself prepared, 
he and Ben, leaving the dormitory, walked 
across the broad campus silently and arm in 
arm. They were opponents in the debate, but 
just then in warm and loyal friendship they 
were thoroughly united. 

George at length broke silence by saying: 

“You ought to feel happy, Ben, that you 
are deemed enough of a debater to be sum- 


72 


Boys and Girls. 


moned by the unanimous voice of the society 
from your presidential chair.” 

“ Well,” said Ben, flushing over George’s 
praise, and feeling at the moment in his gener- 
osity almost desirous that George’s side should 
win, “ I do feel happy when I consider that 
I am chosen to debate with you.” 

The hall was a long room, cheerful and suit- 
ably furnished by the society. 

As Ben tapped his mallet, calling to order, 
the debaters promptly ranged themselves on 
opposite sides of the room, while those who 
were not to participate took a rear and central 
position. 

When the business proceedings of the meet- 
ing had been concluded, the vice-president 
assumed Ben’s place, and the latter took his 
seat among the debaters. 

As the first boy on Ben’s side rose to reply 
to the affirmative, which had been ably opened, 
and to argue, therefore, that the United States 
would not become a monarchy, Ben settled 
himself forward so as not to lose a word of 
what was said. George, forgetful of friend- 
ships, every thing but victory now, assumed an 
attitude of vigilant attention. 

The speaker was a tall, ungainly, immature 


The Temptation. 73 

youth, full of impulse, full of words, and hav- 
ing few ideas. Ben’s cheeks flushed and his 
lips quivered for an instant as Caxton took his 
seat with a flourish, as if he had convinced the 
whole world, and in ignominious contrast with 
the first speaker on George’s side. 

George had shown his superior skill in a 
personal supervision of all the arguments 
prepared for the affirmative. He had culled 
and suggested and added, until each speech, 
from the first to his own, which was the last, 
should have a climactic effect, and trusted to 
individual ingenuity only so far as to caution 
each one to trip, if possible, his opponents by 
questions indicating real or apparent fallacies. 
Witnessing the laughable effect produced by 
Caxton’s speech, he was morally certain that 
no response on his side could be any worse, 
and glowed with satisfaction as his second 
speaker sat down after a few cumbrous, but, 
after all, effectual hits at his opponent, and a 
short but connected argument against the per- 
petuity of a republican form of government in 
the United States. 

Boy after boy spoke. Ben’s side betrayed 
here and there a brilliancy and close reasoning 
that made our hero for the moment sure of 


74 


Boys and Girls. 


success. But the society could not but notice 
that the line of argument on George’s side 
showed a careful arrangement and dignity 
with which the laughable boyishness and en- 
thusiasm often manifested on the negative 
were in poor contrast. 

When at length Ben rose to his feet George 
listened eagerly for his first words. As re- 
garded himself, Ben was well prepared. 

“ I believe in the endurance of republican 
institutions in the United States, because I 
believe in the progress of humanity and a 
growing recognition of the rights of men as 
individuals.” 

“ May I ask you a question ? ” interrupted 
George. 

“Certainly you may,” replied Ben, facing 
him squarely. 

“ If men, as individuals, have rights, irre- 
spective of corporate power, why is your fa- 
ther a man worth thousands and the men whom 
he employs worth hundreds only?” 

“ Because my father and the business cor- 
poration with which he is connected have the 
general prudence and ability sufficient to gain 
thousands, where his men have only skill 
enough to earn hundreds.” 


The Temptation. 


7 5 


“ But suppose,” said George, trying another 
point, “ that, notwithstanding so-called hu- 
man progress, the majority should declare in 
favor of monarchical institutions. Their pow- 
er, as a majority, to establish such institutions 
would prove their right, would it not?” 

“Your question is not relevant to the sub- 
ject for debate,” replied Ben, an angry flush 
rising, for a moment, to his brow. “We are 
debating, I believe, sir, on probabilities, not 
on right and wrong.” Then, instead of hearing 
his reply just here, he added : “ The time when 
monarchy will rule will never come in the his- 
tory of this country.” 

“As the question is one of probabilities, 
prove that it will not,” retorted George. 

Ben’s well-prepared line of thought was 
broken by so long an interruption, and it was 
with some awkwardness that he resumed his 
argument as he had originally planned it. 
Gradually mingling with it the thoughts that 
George had advanced, he continued : 

“ The rights of individuals coincide mainly 
with the rights of corporate bodies when those 
bodies are intelligent. Americans once had a 
bitter fight against taxation without represen- 
tation. They rose in the North to a unit 


Boys and Girls. 


76 

when their right as individual voters was 
threatened by the vast aristocracy of the 
South. No body of men, in a question of 
civil rights, can, in this age of newspaper read- 
ing, gain such a monopoly of power as threat- 
ens for any length of time the interests of 
individuals. Political rights, properly under- 
stood, and the question of capital versus 
labor, are radically different questions,” he 
concluded. 

When George would have asked another 
question, Ben refused to reply. Then, feeling 
that his only hope of gaining the day was in 
an appeal to the patriotism of his fellow-de- 
baters, he entered upon an historical harangue, 
showing, very plausibly, why republican insti- 
tutions had hitherto been so short-lived, and 
alleging that monarchical governments were 
approaching a crisis when they would be com- 
pelled to emulate the example of the United 
States. 

George sprang eagerly to his feet when Ben 
had concluded, but waited until the room had 
become quiet before he began. 

“ My opponent, in his desire to prove that 
republics were short-lived only because of the 
lack of a wide-spread intelligence, omitted to 


The Temptation. 


77 


notice the rock on which every republic has 
heretofore been shattered, and which will event- 
ually be the ruin of the American republic. 
That rock is the controlling influence of 
wealth. Wealth in America, more even than 
in countries where monarchical institutions 
prevail, means position as a statesman, posi- 
tion as a politician, position in society, position 
in the Church. Our country to-day is at such 
an era in her history, that, without money, and 
large sums of it, almost every interest is pow- 
erless. In every city private wealth, so great 
is the monopoly of it becoming, affects the 
interest of thousands. There are corporate 
bodies, so called, but they are controlled 
either by one man, or, as in trades-unions, 
their avowed purpose is to pit the aggregate of 
small properties and small influences against 
one large one. In all cases it is a question of 
power, of power in the individual and power 
obtained through wealth. The tendency with 
man is and always has been toward individual 
greatness ; hence, the time will come to Amer- 1 
ica when the most powerful man will assume 
royal dignity. 

“ My friend argues the growth of a humani- 
tarian philosophy based upon the equal distri- 


73 


Boys and Girls. 


bution of rights. History has proved all efforts 
to accomplish such an end vain ; and that men, 
while apparently working for the general good, 
have sought their own aggrandizement. Trace 
what my friend calls philanthropy to its secret 
springs, and we find it the essence of selfishness. 

“ It seems to me that nations and men will 
always wrangle over the meaning of philan- 
thropy until they learn to recognize the fact 
that strength and power, in nine cases out of 
ten, make right, and that the world will advance 
more rapidly when men, independent of intel- 
lectual vanity, will so train themselves that 
they can become individually powerful. 

“ A monarchy under such circumstances 
would not be absolute, and would contain all 
of the essentially liberal principles of repub- 
licanism. Offices would, of course, be some- 
what under the influence of corrupt parties; 
but, because of their duration for life, in the 
majority of cases, there would be less political 
evil and there would be time for evil to work 
its own cure. Until it can be proved that all 
evil can be expunged from humanity, the best 
thing we can do is to foster such institutions 
as will encourage as small a degree of it as 
possible.” 


The Temptation. 


79 


Thus George continued for some time, clos- 
ing with a peroration that quite eclipsed that 
of Ben, although the latter had the advantage 
of making the final speech. He sat down all 
in a tremor to await the decision, which was 
soon returned in favor of the affirmative. The 
judges, however, brought in their verdict with 
wry faces, for they were all stanch believers in 
the glorious stars and stripes. 

There was an animated discussion on the 
merits of the respective speeches when the 
society adjourned. 

“Let us go down to the oyster-saloon,” at 
last cried one boy, “ and there finish talking 
the matter over.” 

Ben demurred, saying that his lessons for 
the ensuing day were to be learned ; but his 
objections were overruled. Drawing George’s 
arm within his own, in the midst of a throng 
of boys, eagerly talking as they went, our two 
friends pursued their way to the lower part of 
the town. 

Smoking oyster stews were soon served, and 
they proceeded to eat with all that gusto 
which youths at school manifest for any thing 
at all differing from their ordinary bill of fare. 

“ Two dishes for me,” cried a ruddy-faced 


8o 


Boys and Girls. 


boy. “We are called hash-eaters up in town, 
and verily I believe we are something of the 
kind ; I feel so hungry whenever I see any 
thing palatable.’’ 

“ My coffee is weak, too weak for my tired 
brains,” said the wit of the party; “so here’s 
for wine. Waiter, claret in a trice.” 

“Going to treat, Watkins ?” asked Frank 
Wilkes. “ Better do so, lest you be the only 
one to go home merry. This debating society 
ought to be a corporate body.” 

The laugh went round the table, almost all 
joining in it uproariously and urging Watkins 
to a treat. 

Three or four bottles of glowing, tempting 
claret presently made their appearance, and 
Watkins, clashing the glasses together and 
smilingly looking at Ben, poured one full of 
the sparkling liquor, and raising it on high, 
proposed “Our worthy president of the Cham- 
pions ! ” 

Ben sat shocked, powerless to reply, and 
in the interval some one shouted, “ Hurrah ! 
hurrah ! a speech from our worthy president ! ” 
and then “ A speech from our worthy presi- 
dent ! ” echoed around the table. 

It was a trying moment to Ben. Just then 


The Temptation. 8i 

the saloon, with gilt and cheap hangings, its 
rows of tables surrounded wholly by men, the 
grinning mouths of the waiters, who were ex- 
pecting a jolly scene from these college boys, 
the bottles of red wine, and the eager, excited 
faces above them, burned upon his vision like 
a picture of fire. Then, as if he had had 
wings, and a blast of cold air had suddenly 
blown him thither, he was in the little boat on 
Green Lake ; and Bentie sat in front of him, 
her hand washing the long-stemmed, starry 
water-lilies back and forth in the calm water, 
her honest, earnest eyes looking into his and 
pleading with him to join the Church; then 
he stood beside her at the altar, where his in- 
fant head had received its baptismal consecra- 
tion, to publicly assume the vows of a soldier 
of Jesus Christ. And here he was, wine before 
him, his honor pledged in a glass of ruby 
wine, his “ best friends ” expecting him to 
quaff it and make a graceful speech ! 

u Just this once, since I am in such a com- 
pany,” he pleaded with his conscience. “ No,” 
thundered the vows he had so recently made, 
and “ O, no!” glistened in the tears of a pair 
of grave and sorrowful orbs which from his 
babyhood had been to him in moments of 


82 


Boys and Girls. 


doubt a mirror of all holy principles. Ben 
could not turn away from his mother. 

“ Gentlemen,” he said, and his voice trem- 
bled, “ the toast must be given in water if I 
respond.” 

Watkins looked up incredulously, and there 
went round the table one of those glances 
which condemn more than words can do. 

“ Are you in earnest, Stanton ? ” and one 
who stood high as a man of his word gazed 
with astonishment at Ben. 

“ Never more in earnest in my life,” was the 
reply, in a firm and manly tone. 

There was a momentary lull. The waiters 
stood looking on. Watkins, with his glass 
still raised, appeared considering what to do ; 
others sat mute, expecting, and not a few were 
hoping, for a scene. 

Suddenly, so suddenly that there was a 
general start, George arose to his feet. His 
dark eyes glowed with a savage, passionate 
fire ; his lithe frame trembled and his voice 
quivered with intense emotion, as, extending 
his hand and forcibly snatching the glass of 
wine from Watkins’s loose hold, he poured 
its contents into an empty dish, and began 
hurriedly, driven by the weary longing and 


The Temptation. 83 

disgrace of his bitter childhood, to make an 
eloquent appeal. 

“ Ben Stanton and I will never disgrace our- 
selves by an indulgence which will just as 
surely forebode our destruction as that I am 
# standing here fatherless and nameless because 
of wine. Furthermore, if my father, while in 
college, had done as my comrade has to-night ; 
if he had discarded wine even after he married 
my mother, she would not be to-day a fragile 
woman, with no other home than her own frail 
hands can raise, and no other protection than 
the providence of, I hope, a merciful God, and 
the ambitious dreams of a son, whose chief de- 
sire is to eventually restore to her the prac- 
tical benefits which strong drink made my fa- 
ther unable to confer. I am the son of a 
drunkard.” 

George’s voice, elevated to a ringing, pene- 
trating key, trembled on the last word. He 
continued : “ It is a drunkard’s son who begs 
you, because of his blighted childhood, his 
struggling, embittered boyhood, a youth that 
must be burdened with poverty, to desist from 
a terrible experiment. Don’t tamper, at least 
to-night do not, out of respect to my strong 
feelings in the matter.” 

6 


8 4 


Boys and Girls. 


Every eye was moist. The eyes of all in the 
saloon, quiet as a deserted room, were turned 
on the impassioned youth whose influence at 
that moment was supreme. 

After a pause Watkins, looking up at George, 
who still stood, set the claret aside, and then, 
addressing his companions, said: “ Three cheers 
for Holmes’s mother and three more for her 
gritty son ! ” 

The room resounded with the lusty voices 
of the debaters. 

“ Now,” and Watkins waved his hand, “ as 
loudly as ever you can, three cheers for our 
stanch and dignified president, Ben Stanton ! ” 

Again the room rang with the voices of the 
boys. Then, without further ado, they left 
the eating-house, and, separating into groups, 
wended their way through the now deserted 
street, to the dormitories of their venerable 
alma mater. 

George and Ben pursued their homeward 
walk for quite a distance in silence, but soon, 
the debate being mentioned by George, who, 
now that he was in the cool night air, won- 
dered how he had courage to speak so plainly 
of what he rarely mentioned, the two boys 
began to compare notes. 


The Temptation. 


85 


“You are more of a business man — we will 
call it politician,” said Ben laughingly, “ than 
I. That was a fine idea of yours, that of post- 
ing your assistants before hand.” 

“Well, it was managing,” replied George 
frankly. “ But, to tell the truth, I felt like a 
traitor, following the line of argument I did, 
and like a hypocrite, for I did not believe one 
word of it. Why, Ben, the hope I cherish 
deep in my heart is to see the day when I 
shall stand up an uncorrupted and incorrupti- 
ble statesman, defending, with all the learning 
I hope to achieve, and the eloquence I some- 
times dare think I shall develop, the institu- 
tions which I believe are the surety of the 
world’s final redemption from the slavery of 
social vice and the tyranny of capitalists.” 

“Institutions, George,” said Ben, warmly, 
“ whose principles, though embodied in the 
Constitution of these United States, were, ages 
ago, first enunciated in the Bible.” 

“ They are there, it is true,” replied George, 
after a pause ; “ bijt you know that while I 
appreciate the beauty and sublimity of Bible 
precepts, I cannot elevate them in the same 
sense that you love to do. I rank them with 
those of Plato, Bacon, Shakespeare, and others, 


86 


Boys and Girls. 


who wrote truth because they wrote humanity. 
I wish I could believe that they proceed from 
a still loftier inspiration than do the writings of 
men of genius. You cannot understand how 
strong this desire is. I have sometimes thought, 
in listening to eloquent sermons, that could I 
feel and earnestly believe those sermons, no 
calling would be grander or more inviting to 
me than the Bible one of an evangelist. But 
I wish to ask you a question concerning de- 
bates. What do you think of the moral influ- 
ence on a fellow who deliberately works out a 
line of argument of which he does not believe 
a word ? ” 

“ I believe that the moral influence may be, 
and often is, the highest. In too many cases 
people, and especially boys, hold ideas which 
they have inherited or adopted without any 
real thought on their nature. By forcing 
themselves to ponder on the side of a question 
at variance either with their convictions or 
prejudices, they will either be strengthened in 
the former or weakened in the latter ; that is, 
they come to understand all of the bearings 
of a subject. 

“ Besides, if we are to become statesmen, 
lawyers and ministers, we must learn to trace 


The Temptation. 


87 

thought and fallacy in all their subtelties. 
The best way to do so is to penetrate the ar- 
guments of those of our own age and experi- 
ence. All the rules of logic and philosophy 
will avail us nothing, unless we immediately 
apply them. What better place than the 
debating society to do so?” 

“I have thought much the same thing,” 
replied George ; “ but then, the temptation, 
Ben. ” He turned squarely around and 
paused, looking at his companion, as if half 
afraid to utter his thought. The moon, which 
was beginning to break through the heavy 
clouds, cast a beam across his clearly-cut, 
intensely-earnest features. With an effort he 
continued : 

“ I sometimes feel, now that I have reached 
college, as if no person, let alone circumstance, 
should stand in the way of my ambition. You 
believe in God. I do too ; but, Ben, he is a 
terrible being to me ; powerful, unrelenting, 
grand. I can weep over Christ, but his un- 
earthly goodness is such a mystery that I can- 
not comprehend it ; his promises are so wo'n- 
derful that I cannot really believe them. I can 
understand something of God’s power, and 
power is something in which I glory; it is 


88 


Boys and Girls. 


that for which I am striving. My longing for 
it almost makes me tremble. When you, 
the best friend almost that I have on earth, 
were debating, and I ran over the line of my 
argument and saw that while it was less true, 
it was tenfold more plausible than yours, I 
had such a" fierce satisfaction in the thought 
of success that I was ashamed almost to dis- 
traction. Now what am I coming to if I feel 
so selfishly toward a friend ? ” 

George's voice was full of sadness. Ben re- 
garded him with a mingled expression of pleas- 
ure and pain difficult to analyze. He formed 
a marked contrast to George, who, though 
tall and powerfully built, was emaciated and 
pale from incessant study. Ben’s work was 
so even, his abilities so well balanced, that he 
seldom knew what it was to be driven by his 
tasks. His clear brown eyes and healthy skin, 
his broad shoulders, round, compact, unusually 
developed for one of his age, his manly frank- 
ness and polished manners, evident even in tri- 
fles, always awoke in George a desire for 
such a rest as his friend seemed to em- 
body. But George had only expressed to 
Ben a temptation that he had felt almost 
as strongly and would perhaps have experi- 


The Temptation. 89 

enced quite as strongly had his early years 
known the privation and longing of George’s. 
All that had helped Ben to achieve the victory 
over his selfish desires was a comprehension 
and an imitation of that unselfish love which 
Christ had embodied in his life on earth, a 
life which, as George had honestly said, he 
did not understand. 

Ben’s nature was so chivalrous that when 
George expressed his ambitions in such plain 
language, he seemed to see the full ugliness of 
the sin he had been in danger of committing, 
and, curious contradiction as it may seem, was 
loth to acknowledge it, just because of the 
ugliness it seemed to embody. But he knew 
whence his help had come and his duty to 
make that fact known to George. 

“ I had the same temptation, George, in per- 
haps another form. Even in our Sophomore 
year, I cannot but see that if I am not vale- 
dictorian you will be. I came hither with 
the intention of graduating first from my 
class and find myself destined to disappoint- 
ment, George,” and Ben laid his hand on 
his companion’s shoulder. “ It takes all of 
the Christian grit I have some days to feel 
downright glad that you are here, and to feel 


90 


Boys and Girls. 


chiefly proud of good because it is good. I 
love applause.” 

George was touched. Again from this 
wealthy, carefully cultured youth he was learn- 
ing a lesson of the beauty and grandeur im- 
measurably above mere learning and distinc- 
tion. He felt a sudden, intense, uncontrolla- 
ble longing for a sanctifying love to God, 
more unselfish even than that he bore for his 
mother. 

“ I may not be valedictorian, Ben,” he said, 
his voice trembling; “but if I were to be, I 
would relinquish the honor a hundred times 
were I able to say that Christian love prompted 
the act. I am so angular and crooked in my 
nature that I sometimes feel there are fearful 
battles before me. I love you, Ben Stanton,” he 
added emphatically and suddenly, sealing his 
avowal by a warm grasp of the hand, as they 
passed under the grand old trees that shaded 
the campus. 


An Intimate Friend. 


9i 


V. 

AN INTIMATE FRIEND. 

Gj^ENTIE’S year in college had been an un- 
jyip eventful one, so far as school-girl es- 
capades were concerned. She had re- 
cited her three lessons, practiced her music, 
exercised in gymnastics, eaten three meals 
daily, and slept soundly every night, week after 
week and month after month. 

She is no taller, but she is stouter. After 
her walks the roses in her cheeks glow and her 
gray eyes grow darker, and brighter too, until 
one almost queries whether they are black. 

She stands well in her classes, but not above 
the average. She wrote this fact home to her 
father, and was a little inclined to despond. 
He answered by quoting the old fable of the 
tortoise and the hare — a fable, by the way, to 
which American fathers and mothers are be- 
ginning to feel the need of paying more atten- 
tion in the face of stubborn facts in regard to 
health. 


9 2 


Boys and Girls. 


“ If you continue at the even, sure pace in 
which you have commenced, I have no fears 
for your fifth year. Each year will so develop 
your capacity that, when you are a Senior, you 
will find yourself possessed not only of a fund of 
knowledge, but a power of application that will 
make you a pleasure to yourself, a power to 
your friends, and a necessity to any circle in 
which you may be thrown. Remember, Ben- 
tie, that you are working not for college hon- 
ors, but for life usefulness.” 

Not every college girl receives such letters 
as Bentie’s father wrote her. There were 
some who grew greedy of every minute not 
spent in study, feeling that it would be a dis- 
grace not to graduate with high honors. The 
wise suppression that Mr. Winthrop brought 
to bear on his daughter only kept her ambi- 
tion within bounds, for she was aspiring and 
enthusiastic. 

Hence, when Bentie passed her examinations 
and was registered Freshman for her second 
year, no one thought of her except as a charm- 
ing, healthy, and conscientious girl. The 
faculty did not discuss her either pro or con ; 
doubtful cases, either of prodigies or stupid- 
ities formed the theme of their general de- 


An Intimate Friend. 93 

liberations. Fortunately for the world, good 
scholars, like good people, take care of them- 
selves and leave courts of justice, laws, and law- 
makers to look after recalcitrant cases. 

You will be surprised that, after my telling 
you so much about Bentie’s general success, I 
have to chronicle some acts of disobedience. 

She had, as we have before hinted, acquired, 
what is, in nine cases out of ten, a bane to a 
scholar, an intimate friend. To her, Bentie 
read her letters and told her home secrets 
and confided her opinions and revealed her 
thoughts with that lavish generosity and 
abandonment which only a school-girl shows ; 
and she received in return just what she gave. 
The two girls walked together, boated to- 
gether, practiced gymnastics together, and 
became such “ unchangeable friends that 
at length they went to the lady principal and 
petitioned to room together. 

“ Why should they not ? ” was the thought 
that arose in the principal’s mind. Bentie 
was what was called one of the “ good girls, ^ 
her friend was one of the “ promising girls,” 
seemed to study unceasingly, and moreover, 
among her companions, had the reputation of 
being a person of much honor. 


94 


Boys and Girls. 


So Bentie and Adah had their request 
granted. 

“ I like the first floor better than any other, 
don’t you?” asked Adah, as she kneeled be- 
tween her trunk and her bureau to arrange her 
drawers just after the change of room had 
been made. 

“ No, I never did like it as well as the oth- 
ers. I do not feel so secure as I would up 
higher, and it is so much noisier here. But 
this room is certainly pleasant, and we are 
fortunate in having the corner.” 

There were two broad, low windows in the 
apartment, and in one of these Bentie seated 
herself, looking out over the vivid April grass 
and beyond to the floral circle, where bits of 
warm coloring peeped through the shrub- 
bery. 

“Well, I like the first floor because it has 
always had the reputation of being the gayest 
and the one most left alone by teachers ; and 
if there is anything I despise, it is a teacher 
tramping like a policeman past one’s door and 
poking her head in to say good-night when all 
she wants is to look around.” 

“ She has a right to look around,” said Ben- 
tie softly. ' 


An Intimate Friend. 95 

“ Then let her do it boldly, and not smile 
like a hypocrite. If I were a spy, I would be 
an out-and-out one.” 

Adah pursed up her lips, shook out energet- 
ically the folds of the garment she had just 
taken from her trunk, and bravely and honestly 
looked up to Bentie. “ This is a college, Ben- 
tie, and if we girls do not demand collegiate 
rights, why, we shall never have them,” con- 
tinued Adah, rising to arrange her frizzes, 
which were always getting into the most 
charming disorder and requiring a hundred 
daily manipulations. “ There’ll be changes in 
Simpson College before you and I step off the 
stage.” 

Bentie fidgeted in her seat. Because she 
had always obeyed and had loved to do so, 
having been brought up under no arbitrary 
constraint, Adah’s sentiments, expressed with- 
out any real cause, annoyed her. She replied, 
“ As we are only Preps, would we not better 
leave these questions to the regular stu- 
dents ?” 

Adah, pausing in her hair-dressing and look- 
ing at Bentie a moment, replied: “You are 
not one of those Puritans, I hope, Bentie, who 
obey every little rule made by a faculty and 


Boys and Girls. 


96 

half the time by under-teachers. They for- 
get two thirds of them themselves a week 
after they are made, and all the thanks a sub- 
missive student receives is her trouble for her 
pains. I came here to study, and I intend to 
do so when I can and how I can and take the 
consequences. The consequences that one 
takes are always better than the consequences 
one is obliged to receive,” concluded Adah, 
throwing her arms, with a great deal of warmth, 
about Bentie, and giving her a downright, 
hearty, school-girl kiss. “ I am tired of fuss- 
ing about, so let’s get out that Latin before tea, 
shall we ? ” 

Adah had a wonderfully persuasive manner 
in the least thing that she undertook, and Ben- 
tie, who loved her dearly and did not readily 
become fatigued over any thing that she did, 
assented, glad to please Adah, glad to put, as 
soon as possible, her most difficult lesson out 
of the way, and chiefly glad to change a sub- 
ject on which she did not feel quite at home. 

So the two girls sat down in their north 
window through which the soft spring breeze 
came blowing, and forgot all about their dif- 
ferences of opinion in their search for fine 
translations, the “ best word ” to express their 


An Intimate Friend. 


9 7 


meaning, and in scanning, with which Bentie 
was charmed, as she had soon developed a 
power to scan correctly by ear almost every 
kind of Latin verse. 

But after awhile Adah’s remarks recurred to 
Bentie, and they annoyed her. Like most 
other girls, she shrank from being thought a 
“ harmless,” “meek,” “sweet little thing.” 
With the majority of school-girls goodness 
means a quality by virtue of which one of 
their companions has neither the ability nor 
the desire to be otherwise than gentle and in- 
significant. 

Adah Middleton replied when some one 
asked her how it was that she came to room 
with Bentie, by saying that she hardly knew 
why. 

“ But isn’t she a nice little thing — something 
comforting about her? If she were not so 
good she would be splendid company, too,” 
concluded Adah, who had repeatedly endeav- 
ored to coax Bentie into frolics after the re- 
tiring-bell had rung, or into Sunday molasses- 
candy pulls, and various other surreptitious 
proceedings, but as yet without avail. 

So long as Bentie had had a room to herself 
she had remained firm against all of Adah’s en- 


9 8 


Boys and Girls. 


treaties; but now that she was to room with 
her, it was a question in her mind, after a 
week’s experience, how she was to keep rules 
as she had heretofore done. The room was 
half Adah’s, and, as Bentie was not Adah’s 
only friend, it was a rendezvous for other stu- 
dents who did not believe that their honor de- 
pended on being in bed at ten o’clock, or on 
any thing, in fact, but their standing as schol- 
ars and their faithfulness toward one another. 

How silly Bentie felt in going to bed as the 
last bell sounded, while Adah and her friends 
sat sometimes studying, sometimes talking, 
and often eating sardines and crackers, nuts 
and candy, or strawberries and ice cream. 
They seemed to have such a jolly time that 
often she did not know how to remain quiet a 
minute longer. 

One night, when the stories were unusually 
funny and the laughter, notwithstanding all 
effort at repression, loud and merry, she found 
herself, almost before she was aware, sitting 
bolt upright in bed and telling a story that 
rivaled any of its predecessors. 

The girls gathered around the bed and on 
the bed, only too glad to have the silence with 
which Bentie had bound herself broken. 


An Intimate Friend. 


99 


Suddenly the springs gave way, down came 
the bed, and Bentie found herself inadvert- 
ently the cause of Adah’s remaining up till 
midnight — a fact the latter took pains to im- 
press upon her mind, with the lesson that since 
she had disobeyed rules once, she might as 
well continue to do so. 

“ But I did not think before I did it,” 
said Bentie. 

“ O pshaw ! ” exclaimed Adah ; “ you would 
be ten times as nice as you are if you would 
do a few other things before you think. Go 
to bed if you choose, but after this you must 
do your share in telling stories.” 

Thus Bentie by one act exposed herself to 
such a battery from the girls that gradually, 
yet almost before she was aware, she found 
herself one of the leaders in conversation and 
occasionally tasting of the dyspeptic dainties. 
Still, to her firmness be it said, that such acts 
were only occasional, and always against her 
better judgment. She experienced her chief 
difficulty in having hours or time enough for 
any thing, so frequently was the room filled 
with visitors whenever Adah was in. The lat- 
ter was in the habit of rising at three or four 
o’clock in the morning to make up for the time 
7 


100 


Boys and Girls. 


lost through the day, for, though bent on a 
good time, she never once fell below her stand- 
ing as one of the first among the Preparatories. 
Bentie had never allowed herself to read or 
study out of hours. 

One stormy night, when the rain was drip- 
ping musically on the wide stone sills of the 
windows, and the college was hushed with the 
silence of eleven o’clock, Adah, having dismissed 
her visitors, produced a novel, and, sitting on 
the bed up against the head-board, proceeded 
to read. The head of the bed was under the 
gas, and Bentie tossed about, nervous from the 
light, the long-continued noise, and the mul- 
titudinous odors, among which that of sardines 
predominated. The room was filled with the 
oily, fishy odor. 

“ Why don’t you go to sleep, Bentie?” asked 
Adah. 

“ O, I don’t know ; because I can’t, I sup- 
pose. I guess I am nervous,” was the patient 
reply. 

“ Does the light hurt your eyes? This 
novel is the most interesting one, it seems to 
me, that I have ever read. I am right in the 
midst of a ghost-story. It would make your 
two eyes like stars start from their sockets. 


An Intimate Friend. ioi 

Shall I read aloud ? ” rattled Adah, anxious 
to have Bentie comfortable, and at the same 
time not wishing to put her reading aside un- 
til the book was finished. 

“ O no, please don’t, Adah, and do come to 
bed. The room is so bright.” 

“ It’s the light, then ? ” said Adah, a little 
thoughtfully, and then, as she sprang from the 
bed, “ I have an idea, Bentie. I’ll put my 
umbrella over you.” 

Bentie breathed a smothered sigh as Adah 
raised a huge umbrella and planted it on the 
bed over her head. 

“ There, isn’t that a useful invention ? Now 
go to sleep like a good child, and I will hurry 
up with my story. You are a silly goose 
though, my dear, to be so over-conscientious.” 
She presently became absorbed, and, forgetful 
of every thing around her, read on and on un- 
til long after midnight. 

Bentie, meanwhile, afraid to complain fur- 
ther, exerted every power to lie quiet. By 
and by sharp neuralgic pains began to shoot 
through her temples and down her back. The 
minutes seemed endless. “ If Adah were only 
a little more in awe of authority and not quite 
so quick to learn, what nice times we would 


102 


Boys and Girls. 


have rooming together,” was her thought at 
about one o’clock, as Adah, with the exclama- 
tion, “Pshaw, it doesn’t end nicely at all!” 
forcibly closed her book, threw it on the floor, 
and, reaching up to turn out the gas, fell over 
on Bentie with such force that she uttered a 
scream of pain. 

“ Did I waken you, Bentie? Are you hurt, 
my dear?” 

“ I have not been asleep at all.” 

“ Why didn’t you tell me ? I would have 
come to bed. You will tell me the next time, 
wont you ? ” 

But the next time came so often, and the 
book or the fancy work was so absorbing, that 
Adah inevitably had an excuse to remain up 
just a little longer, and Bentie learned to lie 
quiet, and also acquired a bad habit of lying 
awake for two or three hours. 

Bentie’s rich color began to fade, her eyes 
to acquire a strained, dull look, and when she 
did sleep her dreams were troubled and 
wildly distorted. Adah, on the contrary, who 
never borrowed trouble, and was almost utterly 
regardless as to whether others were pleased 
or displeased with her, slept dreamlessly, and, 
with the exception of losing a little flesh, 


An Intimate Friend. 103 

found herself able to endure the extra ex- 
ertion. 

Bentie unconsciously, though never remain- 
ing up long beyond the hour of retiring, grad- 
ually lengthened the time for preparation for 
bed, and often found herself up ten or fifteen 
minutes after the last bell had rung. 


104 


Boys and Girls. 


VI. 

THE CONFESSION. 

NE morning, after Adah had been up un- 
usually late, and Bentie’s face looked 
bloodless and tired from protracted wake- 
fulness, the lady principal, after prayers, look- 
ing gravely over the hundreds of young faces 
before her, said: 

“ Young ladies, we place you largely upon 
your honor, imposing only such rules as are 
necessary for your standing as scholars and the 
preservation of your health. We do not steal 
upon you in slippered feet; in all essentials, 
we accord you the same confidence and afford 
you many more comforts and refinements than 
you could have did you attend a college for 
gentlemen. Because you cannot endure the 
rigor of from four to six years of study and 
the dissipation of late hours, late suppers, and 
exciting reading at midnight, we require that 
you all be in bed at ten o’clock. Young la- 
dies, unless you can trust your welfare to us in 



The Confession. 105 

these four particulars, treating us with as much 
confidence as we show toward you, we do not 
want you here. I desire every student who has 
kept her gas burning after ten o’clock to report 
to me before to-morrow.” 

The lady principal was a woman whose very 
presence was calculated to inspire the stu- 
dents with awe. Above middle height, and 
majestic in carriage, when she was indignant 
her clear blue eyes flashed, and her whole face, 
expressive even in repose, was a perfect mirror 
of the feelings which agitated her. Dressed, 
as regarded trimmings, with great plainness, 
her toilet was, nevertheless, always exquisitely 
neat and often elegant. She was in all matters 
of taste and dress a woman whom mothers 
could wish their daughters to imitate. Bentie 
had often followed her with admiring glances 
when she walked majestically down the long 
corridors, and had made many a silent resolve 
to never incur her displeasure. She felt as if 
she would sink through the floor should any 
thing occur to call her to a private audience 
over misdemeanors. Now the time had come. 
She was far too honest to wait for a summons, 
and too high-spirited to relish the thought of 
a series of cross-questionings, as if she were a 


106 Boys and Girls. 

criminal. Adah left the chapel with feelings 
quite different from Bentie’s. “ There will be a 
fuss, no matter how you may arrange it. So 
I shall let the fuss come to me. Never bor- 
row trouble, my dear,” she said patronizingly, 
as Bentie, sitting down beside their pleasant 
eastern window, reviewed her case. 

“ Without any ‘ ifs and ands ’ about it,” 
she said at length, a little excitedly, “ I have 
done wrong, Adah Middleton, and I am sorry 
for it. The only thing in regard to the matter 
that I am puzzled about is the form of my 
confession. I haven’t any possible excuse, 
and Miss Rushmore always wants a reason, 
and a good one too, for every thing.” 

“ O, go to her and tell her that your room- 
mate delights in midnight orgies, and that you 
have consequently fallen into bad habits,” 
said Adah sarcastically, speaking, for the first 
time since they had roomed together, with 
total disregard to the finer moral nature of her 
companion. Adah had all along secretly felt 
that what she called her companion’s goodness 
answered for both of them. It argued well for 
her that Bentie, quiet, obedient, gentle Bentie, 
had wanted her for a room-mate. 

Bentie leaned her chin upon her hand, and, 


The Confession. 


107 


though her eyes filled with tears over Adah’s 
insinuation, made no reply. She had not in- 
tended for an instant to implicate her friend, 
and her generous nature was sorely wounded 
that Adah could suspect she would. Her 
heart turned, as it always did when she was in 
trouble, to Aunt Winifred, and she felt that 
she would give much for some of her motherly 
advice in this dilemma. 

All day long she revolved in her mind the 
method of her confession. When night came, 
feeling sure that questioning would lead her 
to mention Adah, she decided to write. After 
frequent rewriting and rewording, she at 
length with trembling fingers deposited in 
Miss Rushmore’s letter-box a note which read 
as follows: 

“ My Dear Miss Rushmore: I have repeat- 
edly broken a rule by remaining up a few min- 
utes after ten o’clock, and twice by inadvertent- 
ly engaging in conversation until a late hour. 
I have hesitated about acknowledging my 
faults, as I have no reasonable excuse to offer. 
I beg your pardon, and promise to retire punc- 
tually during the remainder of my connection 
with the college.” 


108 Boys and Girls. 

Bentie felt that her note sounded stiff and 
formal. She had, between a fear of appearing 
hypocritical and a dread of implicating Adah, 
experienced great difficulty in framing any 
kind of a letter that would suit her case. 
When the note was out of her hands she felt 
better, though, than she had in a long time ; 
especially since Adah, in spite of her protesta- 
tions, felt a little timid about remaining up for 
the present. Bentie had darkness and quiet 
sufficient to enjoy a long and restful night’s 
sleep. But she feared to meet Miss Rushmore. 
She was sure that, as soon as that lady had an 
opportunity, she would talk to her at great 
length not only over her disobedience, but her 
daring in breaking a rule without any excuse 
for so doing. She spent a weary week in 
dodging Miss Rushmore. She began to hope 
for a summons, all her efforts to the contrary 
notwithstanding. This criminal feeling was 
dreadful. 

On Saturday morning Bentie started from 
her room with the intention of going to the 
library, which was in the center of the vast 
building. As she stepped into the corridor her 
eyes instinctively sought the lady principal’s 
doors. They were closed, and her own poor 


The Confession. 109 

guilty self was the only one to be seen. She 
drew a breath of relief and started down the 
long hall when suddenly, around an angle two 
or three hundred feet distant, she saw Miss 
Rushmore’s stately form appear and pause. 

Whatwas to be done? An encounter seemed 
inevitable, and yet poor Bentie had such a 
shaking about her knees that she felt she must 
defer it for the present. If some one that she 
knew would come out of one of the many 
rooms opening on the corridor ! As if in an- 
swer to her wish, almost at the same instant, 
three doors opened and between Bentie and 
her judge were three of her friends with 
whom she might become engaged in conversa- 
tion and thus have an excuse for passing Miss 
Rushmore unnoticed. 

She seized the arm of the first one and had 
just begun to talk vivaciously when her com- 
panion, stopping by a staircase, said, “ I’m in 
a hurry and must go up here. Tell me some 
other time.” 

Bentie walked on, the thought not occurring 
to her that she might retrace her steps. She 
overtook the second student, but only in time 
to see her turn away and enter a room. The 
third one, just as the distance between herself 


1 10 


Boys and Girls. 


and the lady principal grew alarmingly short, 
struck with the recollection of something that 
she had forgotten, paused, and then, hurriedly 
turning, left the space empty between Bentie 
and her judge, who fortunately, Bentie thought, 
stood at such an angle that she might not no- 
tice her. Fixing her eyes on the further end 
of the corridor, without turning her head, she 
walked rapidly on. Now she is opposite Miss 
Rushmore, now ten feet beyond, and is safe. 

Softly, penetratingly, like a sentence of doom 
as it seemed to her, Bentie heard her name 
pronounced. Thoroughly frightened and ex- 
cited now, she paused, and then, like some ma- 
chine, mechanically walked toward her prin- 
cipal, who was leaning on the baluster, her 
eyes fixed upon her pupil’s countenance. 

At length the gulf was bridged and Bentie 
stood beside her, eyes downcast, tears strug- 
gling for the mastery. 

Miss Rushmore gently took her hand, bent 
and kissed the sad, broad, guilty brow, and 
saying, hardly above a whisper, “ Dear, I re- 
ceived your note,” pressed her hand. 

Bentie looked up so pleadingly, so con- 
tritely, that Miss Rushmore, experienced as 
she was, felt her eyes suddenly moisten. She 


The Confession. 


iii 


pressed Bentie’s hand again, and saying, 
“ That is all I wish,” released her. 

Bentie! If the sun had come down and 
overwhelmed her with a glorious, blinding, be- 
wildering radiance, she could hardly have felt 
warmer, happier, more transformed. She felt 
as though she had suddenly wakened from an 
ugly nightmare to gaze upon a serene and 
joyful June morning. 

Entering her parlor with bounding steps, 
she hastened into their bedroom, where Adah 
was sitting, and, taking a stool at her feet, re- 
lated, between tears and smiles, how kindly 
Miss Rushmore had received her. 

Adah looked incredulously at Bentie, and 
then ejaculating, “ Is that so ! ” said, “ Well, 
I am beginning to feel the need of sleep, and 
guess I will confess too and promise obedience 
for the remainder of the year. I’ll go at the 
next office-hour.” 

Adah went. She looked so confident, ac- 
knowledged so graciously that she had trans- 
gressed, and begged Miss Rushmore’s pardon 
with such perfect ease and self-possession, that 
that lady, divining the cause, repressed her in- 
clination to smile, and delivered a moral lecture 
that called the blushes to Miss Middleton’s 


1 12 Boys and Girls. 

cheeks and sent her away humiliated and feel- 
ing that she had been a very great simpleton 
in acknowledging with her lips what she did 
not feel in her heart. 

Somehow, after this episode, there was a 
change. Bentie felt that she had acted in ac- 
cordance with her convictions; Adah, that 
she was occupying a position that was almost 
intolerable. The latter had never been re- 
strained, and the yoke which she had put 
upon herself and which Miss Rushmore took 
care that she wore daily, chafed more and 
more. After awhile she began to condemn 
Bentie as the cause of her momentary sub- 
mission, and to seek society wholly outside of 
her parlor. 

Although Bentie patiently bore this neglect, 
yet she was too proud-spirited to remain in 
such close proximity to one who so totally 
misunderstood her. When the June vacation 
came she felt that she had learned a lesson 
that would lead her to keep a single room if 
she were fortunate enough to secure one for 
another year. 

So she and Adah parted — without words, 
without kisses. Right and wrong principles 
could no more harmonize in their case than in 


The Confession. i i 3 

that of multitudes of others who have tried to 
combine them and have failed. 

The grand lesson, therefore, of Bentie’s first 
year was this : that health, self-respect, and 
scholarship seemed inevitably connected with 
a proper respect for those placed in authority, 
and with obedience to rules; that for solid 
comfort and enduring friendship she must 
seek companions among those who had the 
same Christian principles as she herself. 


Boys and Girls. 


i 14 


VII. 

A TRAGIC SCENE. 

S MARCH storm was brewing. Along 
the horizon hung masses of dull, gray 
clouds that curled down over the hills 
and crept slowly toward the valleys until they 
were enveloped in a damp, raw, penetrating - 
mist. The sun hung in the heavens like the 
sickly, deadened light of a smoke-begrimed 
lamp. Now and then through the bare and 
toughened branches of the trees the wind 
swept with a sharp, short wail. The night 
came on. The foot-passengers on the street 
hurried their pace, and those within-doors drew 
nearer to the fire. 

Down by the Battery, with his face turned 
toward the upper part of the city, was a tall, 
quaint, but powerfully-built man. He looked 
irresolute. His eyes were hollow and despair- 
ing. Hunger was stamped upon his features. 
His clothing was tattered. His hands trem- 
bled as he folded closer about his form his 


A Tragic Scene. 


115 

ragged coat, as the wind came up from the 
sea with a boom in its voice, as if it were a 
trumpet announcing a battle. 

The man turned his desolate eyes upon a 
street-car as it jingled by with its lights 
and passengers. He made a movement to- 
ward it, as he fumbled in his pocket, and then 
muttering, “ No money,” walked slowly and 
staggeringly forward. He was dizzy with 
drink, but he was fully conscious of what 
he did. 

On and on he walked, occasionally pausing 
before some window filled with rich food or 
fine apparel, occasionally shrinking into the 
shadow of a wall as the eyes of others on the 
street were attracted by his peculiar appear- 
ance. There was a certain grandeur about 
him, despite his rags and general uncanniness. 
The mist had condensed into rain, which fell 
with a steady, sad drip upon the pavements 
and in cold freezing drops upon the head and 
face of the drunkard. But still he walked on 
amid the glare and life of Broadway. He 
reached Twenty-third Street. Coming out on 
Madison Square, he paused, as if exhausted, and 
then sank down, stupidly and suddenly, upon 
a bench beside the empty fountain. On the 
8 


Boys and Girls. 


116 

square was a little Swiss chalet , where refresh- 
ments were sold in the day-time. Its diminu- 
tive gables and brackets were tipped with 
icicles which gleamed coldly as now and then 
the gas-jets lighted them. There was no glow 
or sound within. It and every thing around 
it looked deserted. Across the square was a 
great clock, whose black face stared solemnly 
down upon the pavement, and which seemed 
to have turned into a dozen eyes. Its fingers 
pointed to eleven o’clock. Just behind it 
was a vast hotel, whose marble front, already 
discolored by dust and rain, looked as if it 
were weeping with sorrow despite the myriad 
cheerful lights shining through its hundred 
windows. Around the hotel, down Twenty- 
third Street and Broadway, rattled the omni- 
buses. 

A bell from some church tower tolled eleven 
o’clock. Right after, from the doors of a 
theater not far off poured the pleasure-seek- 
ers. The drunkard glanced at the carriages 
filled with those who gave no thought, on that 
bitter, chilly night, to the vagrants every- 
where around them. Not one in passing the 
square noticed in the gloom the bent, forsaken 
wanderer sitting in the rain. 


A Tragic Scene. 


ii 7 

When the streets were becoming quiet and 
only at long intervals passengers crossed the 
square, the drunkard rose, and, drawing his 
hat down over his eyes, started in the direction 
of the East River. 

Coming toward him were a woman and a 
boy. The latter, whose eyes were every 
where in a minute, and who, though not over 
twelve years of age, was familiar with every 
street and alley in the great city, looked up into 
his companions face, and said : “ There is the 
very man of whom I spoke to you to-day ; the 
one I saw by Castle Garden when I was selling 
the morning papers. I never saw a face like 
his, ma’am, before.” 

The three came face to face in the full 
glare of a street-lamp. Mechanically and 
vacantly the man turned his eyes upon the 
woman and the boy, abroad at such a late 
hour and in such weather. She glanced into 
his face, somewhat curious after the boy’s de- 
scription. That look made them both pause, 
made the woman blanch and the man bend for- 
ward with a wild, questioning gaze, and a mo- 
ment later he hoarsely ejaculated, “ Miriam ! ” 

She held out her hands on hearing her name, 
and while the tears ran down her cheeks, said : 


1 1 8 Boys and Girls. 

“ Are you ready, now, to come home to me, 
George ? ” 

He bent his head upon his breast, then, 
looking down on the delicate and plainly but 
well-dressed woman at his side, said, “Yes, 
if you can take me back after my desertion.” 

“ I married you, George, for better or for 
worse, and to-night the worst is the best for 
me.” 

She took his arm with a suppressed tender- 
ness in her attitude, and the boy, who was 
none other than Job, leading the way, the two 
walked toward the west. 

Job went along nodding to himself and 
looking very cross. He had felt such a wor- 
shipful reverence for Mrs. Holmes that now 
seeing her walk arm in arm with that vaga- 
bond of a man was too much for his patience. 
“ She is too good for him,” he muttered ; and 
then he reproached himself for pointing the 
vagabond out. 

Job knew too well what a home made des- 
olate by drink was to cherish any imaginary 
romances over this drunkard, tattered and 
forlorn as he looked. He knew what it meant 
to receive a kick for a kiss, a blow for a “ thank 
you, starvation at home while plenty was 


A Tragic Scene. 


i 19 

poured forth in the dram-shops. So it was in 
no peaceable frame of mind that he inserted 
the night-key into Mrs. Holmes’s door, and 
listened as he preceded them to the uncertain 
steps of their strange companion. 

When the gas was turned on and the fire in 
the grate uncovered, and her husband looked 
around on the coziness and plenty every-where 
visible in the plodding woman’s house, he sank 
wearily into a chair, and, uttering a stifled 
groan, covered up his face. 

This touched Job, who accordingly began 
to act irresolute. He stood for a moment, 
with hat in hand, regarding Mrs. Holmes, 
who was leaning on the mantle, her eyes on 
the fire. 

“ I guess, ma’am, that I will go to bed ; but 
I wont sleep,” he added, “and if you need 
me, why I will be up in a minute.” 

Job disappeared, his throat choking. He 
cried himself to sleep, wishing that he could 
bear more burdens for his new friends than 
somehow fell to his lot. 

Left alone with the man who had deserted 
her when her son was not much more than a 
babe, the past rushed upon the patient woman 
like a flood. The tide swept up strong and 


120 


Boys and Girls. 


full now, and, sinking down in a heap beside 
the grate, she buried her face in her hands 
and wept. At this the man sat up, and, with 
something of the same look of desperation and 
melancholy that his face had worn when he 
was out in the rain, he rose and tried to pace 
the floor. He went to the window and leaned 
his face against the pane. The howl of the 
wind, rain, blackness, desolation were without. 
He turned round, and then, as if it were a fare- 
well to every thing good in the world, he 
glanced at the various objects in the room, 
then at his bowed and now silent wife. He 
stood lingeringly, regretfully. Then, advanc- 
ing toward her, like a condemned culprit, he 
bent down and kissed her, saying, “ I will go, 
Miriam.” 

She sprang up with a cry of pain and great 
longing, exclaiming, “No, O no, you shall 
not go, George, dear George ! ” and she laid 
her head on his arm with so much tenderness 
and love that a glad, solemn surprise shone 
out from his sharp and wasted features. Was 
he really wanted, he who had proved recreant 
to the highest, holiest vows that a man can 
assume ? 

She looked up and stood erect with the 


A Tragic Scene. 


121 


firmness that had supported her through long, 
neglected years, and said, “You have not 
asked about our son, our boy George.” 

“O — our boy?” and the man, his senses 
perhaps becoming confused by the warmth of 
the room and the violence of his momentary 
emotion, looked questioningly into the eager 
face of his wife. 

A stifling pain smote her heart. Could 
sickness, hunger, misery, the sharpness, even 
of death allow her to forget her son, her only 
son ? And here his father stood and knew not 
that such a gift had ever blessed his life. Her 
woman’s nature was angry now. 

“ Have you sunk so low — so low that you 
have forgotten half the sin of your desertion ? 
Do you remember me because I can give you 
bread and drink? ” 

Still the same vacant look; a momentary 
shudder, a tottering. The man fell prone to 
the floor in a dead faint. 

“ Job, Job, help ! ” 

In an instant Job was in the room and his 
stout little arms, together with Mrs. Holmes’s 
nervous strength strung to desperation, suc- 
ceeded in placing the drunkard on a sofa. He 
was a long time in recovering from the swoon, 


122 


Boys and Girls. 


and when he did so he seemed stupefied, yet 
gentle and tearful as a little child sobbing 
over it knows not what. He took the hot 
drink offered to him and presently sank into 
a profound, lethargic slumber. 

Job had seated himself on a stool and when 
the great man was actually asleep he turned 
to Mrs. Holmes and asked, 

“ What are you going to do with him ? ” 

“ Take care of him.” 

“I wouldn’t. I have seen lots of them just 
as taken down as he is. As soon as they are 
warmed and a bit stronger and think they are 
provided for they are just as bad as ever. 
You’d better not,” and Job looked like some 
wise physician at the prostrate man. 

Mrs. Holmes could not be offended, the boy 
was so simply earnest. She knew that what- 
ever he urged was for her sake. 

“ Job, my boy, what if I had said the same 
about you when you came to me ragged, dirty, 
and from a grog-shop.” 

“ The odds is altogether different, ma’am,” 
replied Job with an independent respect. 
“ There’s no knowing how a boy will turn out. 
He’s a man,” and Job pointed his one remain- 
ing finger at the sleeper, 


A Tragic Scene. 


123 

* “ Doctors say that while there is life there 
is hope.” 

“ But it is a hope nigh as good as none. 
Why, don’t you see how it will be? ” and Job 
stood up in his earnestness. “ It’ll cost all 
you ve laid by for George to clothe his father, 
and it will take the time from the school, and 
things and you and all of us will go to ruin 
generally. I don’t care for myself so much, 
but I care for you. You’re too good for 
him.” And Job sat down on his stool, and, 
burying his chubby face in his hands, cried. 

I wonder, girls and boys, whether you can 
realize Mrs. Holmes’s position. 

There were' fifty children comforted and, in 
the best sense of the word, housed through 
her daily care. She had one son who had al- 
ways been obedient and whose ambition and 
scholarship promised to atone in a measure for 
the sorrow and disgrace of the past. She had 
friends, too, now, and among them were those 
who loved her, and all respected her. As she 
sat there, looking at the future, whose horizon 
till this evening was tinged with a rosy glow 
that had been long in dawning, and back at 
the profound shadows of the past, represented 
by her fallen husband, the question was not 


124 


Boys and Girls. 


one of love, but one of duty as to what was to 
be done. 

She forgot all about Job as she sat there 
thinking of the strange way in which her hus- 
band had returned. She believed in provi- 
dences. Was this one? What if it should 
break up her school ? What if George should 
have to come from college? What if they 
should suffer again the disgrace of a drunkard’s 
home? Would it then be a Providence ? Job 
evidently thought not, and was he not right ? 
While she pondered a sense of Heaven and 
all its vast concerns, a sense of a future of woe 
when all of this earth’s struggles should be laid 
aside by her husband, came to her. No ; she 
could not send the wretched man away. Per- 
haps he would reform. Perhaps he would by 
and by remember the son of whom he had 
such reason to be proud. Thus, when she at 
length spoke to Job she said : 

I believe, Job, that God sent my husband 
back to me and that it is my place and my 
son’s to care for him. I am sure it will be a 
labor of love as well as of duty.” 

As soon as she had said this she felt a great 
weight lifted from her heart. It is good some- 
times for the old to confide their thoughts to 


A Tragic Scene. 


125 


the young. Having made up her mind as to 
what to do, she felt she had a right to all the 
love she had endeavored to repress for him 
who had deserted her. 

Job acted as though he could not under- 
stand such love and such generosity, and said 
bluntly, after profound meditation : 

“ What if he should kick and beat you some 
night.” 

“ I don’t think he will, my boy.” 

“You can’t tell nothin’ about it. They’ll 
turn as sudden. They’re queer,” he added em- 
phatically. “ But, Mrs. Holmes, I’ll never leave 
you. I wouldn’t help my own father when he 
got drunk, but I’ll help this man for you.” 

Job looked down at the sleeper as if he 
pitied him, but his commiseration was the 
pity of supreme contempt. 

“Well, I am glad you will. But, Job, this 
man you see — so fallen — ” Mrs. Holmes 
hesitated to utter these last words. But she 
was with an honest boy, and the plainer she 
spoke the more weight her words would have. ' 
“ This man is my husband, and very dear to 
me. He was once so good and so strong that 
I thought there never had been any one so 
good and so strong. I am going to try to 


126 


Boys and Girls. 


bring his memory back to those sweet old 
days and help him to return to the strength 
and manhood of the old times. If you wish 
to help me you must not look at him with 
pity or disgust, but with love and consolation. 
Can you do so ? ” 

Job’s head was bent sideways and his face 
wore an expression of undisguised astonish- 
ment. Such a lesson he had never been called 
upon to learn. He could utter the most un- 
qualified praise when his admiration and re- 
spect were excited. But to treat him with for- 
bearance and to manifest love for him in ex- 
pression and manner was a surprising request. 

“Can you really love him, Mrs. Holmes?” 

“ I love him ! Does Christ love you, Job ? ” 

Job hung his head. His impulsive, passion- 
ate little heart, his hands lifted so often to 
fight, his feet that had gone on so many mis- 
chievous errands — his whole sinful self was 
dear to the sinless, perfect Christ. He saw 
immediately how long-suffering human beings 
should act toward one another. Looking up 
he said : 

“ It kind o’ seems now — doesn’t it ? — as if we 
never ought to give a sinner up. But, Mrs. 
Holmes,” and Job rubbed his hair all awry in 


A Tragic Scene. 


127 


his perplexity, “ it takes all the faith I have to 
believe that God can save — drunkards. Now 
I am going to try real hard to do as you say, 
and if I look kind o’ pityin’ and ashamed of 
him you must let me know.” 

The lady, so accustomed to face the bitter 
knowledge of her husband’s disgrace, did not 
flinch at the untaught boy’s bluntness, but 
smiling gently and even hopefully, replied : 

“ Have patience and hope, and the time 
will come when you will have no occasion to 
pity this man. Now go to bed.” 

Left alone with the sleeping victim of strong 
drink, her thoughts wandered to a sunny past 
when life was love and honor seemed assured. 
She saw her husband the center of brilliant 
rooms ; her infant boy, with the world spread 
out from which to choose ; herself protected 
and beloved. She recalled those times of well- 
nigh fatal sickness to her husband, and when, 
to restore him, she herself had mixed liquor 
and presented it to his lips. One by one she 
recalled those days in which his need for some- 
thing strengthening seemed to increase, until 
at length the decanter was always at hand and 
his breath always redolent of liquor. Next 
in the solemn, silent procession of mistaken 


128 


Boys and Girls. 


deeds passed that awful night that came on in 
peace and happiness and ended in bitterness 
and tears. That night revealed the dark 
brown eyes bleared and irresponsive; the keen, 
quick mind shaken on its throne ; the helpful 
hands, powerless and tremulous ; the voice, that 
had never once failed in kindness, wailing in the 
agonies of delirium tremens. If some other 
means had been devised to bring him up from 
the valley of the shadow of death ; if he had 
only laid his proud head low in the glory of 
his manhood, before it was so crowned with 
groveling shame ; if only — She looked, 
with a reproachful conscience, on the wreck 
before her and sent up a prayer for help to lead 
him gently back to self-reliance and soul- 
health. 

Boys and girls, there are three parts to each 
one of us : this body, provided by our heavenly 
Father with exquisite senses to feel and taste, 
hear and see, and thrill with all that is beauti- 
ful ; these minds, to see farther than our eyes 
can see, and take hold of that mysterious 
something we call knowledge ; these souls, that 
impel us toward God and, if taught aright, curb 
us when we would do with our bodies or 
our minds that which is debasing. How we 


A Tragic Scene. 


129 

should shudder and examine ourselves when 
we see men, women, or children committing 
that which will bring them to ruin. Tempted 
as they have been, we would, perhaps, have 
done the same. We are to so live that when 
in danger we can cling to Christ and find de- 
liverance through his aid. 

Were you ever brought into daily contact 
with a drunkard ? If so, young as you are, you 
know that the effort to reform is a thousand 
fold more difficult than the most abandoned 
fall had been. Poor Mrs. Holmes! she took 
up her burden bravely, but, if her patient 
soul could have foreseen all, she would have 
paused. 

When, the next morning, her husband awoke 
he was gloomy, discouraged, and silent. He 
sat before the fire with his face bowed in his 
hands the greater part of the day. Some- 
times his eyes looked so hungry and wild that 
his wife was afraid of him. But there were 
her little school to care for, her house to look 
after, and a long letter to write to her son ; 
so she dared not yield to her fear, and had not 
even time to shed the tears that trembled in 
her eyes. Like many another mother, out of 
the midst of her sadness she wrote a happy 


130 


Boys and Girls. 


letter to George, one that sent him laughing 
into Ben’s room to tell the latter “ how gay- 
mother is becoming.” 

She kept her husband out of sight as much 
as possible the first week. Then, his face hav- 
ing lost something of its wildness, she coaxed 
him out into the school-room one sunny after- 
noon. When his tall form appeared in the 
door, there was a perfect hush among the lit- 
tle ones and the larger boys and girls. Job 
looked up from his books, and as his inquisi- 
tive eyes scanned the object of his abhorrence 
he could hardly believe what he saw. A clean 
shirt, whole garments, and hair neatly dressed, 
can change any one. Job thought that if those 
lines in the severe face were not quite so deep, 
and if the great melancholy eyes could bright- 
en with a smile, there would be something to 
love in the silent man. 

As Mr. Holmes’s eyes wandered over the in- 
nocent faces and then turned to the counte- 
nance of his wife, whose heart was beating over 
the possible results of this visit to the school- 
room, they bore a puzzled look. He passed his 
hand across his brow, and then glanced inquir- 
ingly into the faces of the smallest present. At 
length, and while the room was so quiet that 


A Tragic Scene. 


131 

you could have heard a pin drop, he looked 
down with fear and sorrow and asked : 

“ Where is our boy, our little George ? ” 
Memory had at last returned. 

Mrs. Holmes pressed her hand upon her 
heart, it beat so rapidly with joy and excite- 
ment, as she replied : 

“ George is away from home.” 

The answer seemed to satisfy him for a mo- 
ment, and then, a disappointed look crossing 
his face, he continued : 

“ How soon is he coming back?” 

“ I did not set a time.” 

“ Send for him, then. I want to see him. 
Here,” motioning to Job. Job came forward, 
and the father, struggling with recollections 
that now seemed flooding his soul, said excit- 
edly, “ Go for George immediately and tell him 
that his father wants to see him.” 

Job looked at Mrs. Holmes in confusion, 
but the latter smilingly said, 

“ We shall have to write for George. He is 
nearly a hundred miles away.” 

“/will write,” said the father, with all the 
tremulousness and eagerness of a sick child. 
“He must come right home.” 

Catching hold of a door-post to steady him- 
9 


132 


Boys and Girls. 


self, for he was very weak now that he was 
from under the influence of liquor, he drew 
himself out of the door into the little parlor, 
and sank exhausted into a chair. 

“ I must have something to strengthen me, 
Miriam.” 

She brought him a cup of strong coffee 
which she kept always ready for such demands, 
which were frequent. But he pushed it away 
with — 

“ Something stronger than that, Miriam. I 
shall die, I am so weak.” 

She stood motionless and silent, hoping 
that the burning thirst for liquor would pass off. 

He attempted to rise as he saw that she 
made no effort to grant his request, and a wild 
look again took possession of his eyes. 

“ Miriam, I will have whisky. Where do you 
keep your liquor?” 

“ George,” she expostulated, and, grasping 
his two arms, she endeavored to gently force 
him back into his chair. “ My husband, you 
might better die than taste liquor again.” 

A passionate anger suddenly seized him. 
He wrenched his arm from her grasp, and lift- 
ing it, forcibly brought down his clenched fist 
upon her upturned brow, saying : 








A Tragic Scene, 








A Tragic Scene. 


i35 


“ Will you bring me whisky — wh-i-sky?” 
and he prolonged the last word as if he were 
tasting the coveted beverage. 

With one low, grieving cry she tottered ; her 
other hand relaxed, and she fell senseless to 
the floor. 

The noise brought little eyes to the key- 
hole, and Job, who had been living with Mrs. 
Holmes for a month, and therefore felt a right 
to the house, thrust the curious children aside, 
and, opening the door, rushed in. His affec- 
tionate nature comprehending at once the 
state of the case, his indignation knew no 
bounds. His keen eyes flashing, his little 
hands clenched, he cried out : 

“You have killed her! You have killed her!” 

The wretched man — his longing having dis- 
appeared with his blow — stood as if dazed, and 
made no effort to move. As Job spoke he 
looked at the boy with absolute fear, and then, 
falling back into his chair, began to cry pit- 
eously. 

The children were all in the room by this 
time. They stood in a circle around their 
teacher, and down their frightened little faces 
rolled the tears. Job, feeling that everything 
devolved upon him, asked the five or six of his 


136 Boys and Girls. 

own age to help him lift Mrs. Holmes to the 
bed. 

“ Be careful, children, she is tired out, poor 
thing — and hurt. If you should let her fall — ” 
Job stooped, and, turning her head, revealed 
her bleeding forehead to the children. A si- 
multaneous cry broke out. Down upon the 
patient, weary forehead fell Job’s tears. Never 
were hands and feet bedewed with truer or 
more loving emotion than that which moist- 
ened the hands and feet that the children held 
as the older of their number carefully lifted 
Mrs. Holmes and bore her to her bed. Then, 
with solemnity, Job sent the others home. 
Returning to his pale and silent friend he 
carefully bathed the wound, and fastened a 
cool bandage around the brow. Mrs. Holmes 
made not the slightest stir while he was doing 
this. After awhile, and when he was chafing 
the cold hands, he paused, suddenly impressed 
with the quiet that every-where reigned in the 
house. The hum from the street, deadened 
by the closed doors and windows, seemed far 
away and even added to the hush. 

“ What if Mrs. Holmes should never waken !” 
Job had seen men and women in long swoons 
more than once during his life in the streets. 


A Tragic Scene. 


i37 


But there were others to care for them, and he 
was but a looker on. He did wish that the 
tired eyelids would lift and the well-known 
smile shine out. He passed his hand caress- 
ingly down the patient’s cheek. It was so 
cold. The mouth was partly open. “ I will 
close it,” and the little boy gently pressed the 
chin. The lips touched, and then slowly, 
slowly parted, and gradually settled a little 
apart. The tightness that had been about the 
eyes now began to lessen, and the long lashes 
to brush lightly the pale cheeks below them. 

“ She feels easier,” murmured Job, and 
again he took her hand to chafe it into warmth. 
It was even colder than before. 

Seized now with awful fear, he paused, and, 
remembering that he had seen physicians 
bend the ear to the breast, he laid his head 
upon the heart that had so often beat with 
loving throbs for others. There was not a 
flutter ; there was not a movement of the 
clothing. How still; how very still! Job 
lifted up his head and placed his ear upon the 
open lips. There was not the slightest sound. 
His tears came in floods. “ She cannot be 
dead ! ” and he put his mouth to the icy ear 
and begged for a word. It seemed to him, as 


138 


Boys and Girls. 


he looked at her face for an answer, that there 
was a smile there, and he called again, moment- 
arily ceasing his tears. But the smile was 
only that which I think God not unfrequently 
wreathes about the lips of those who have 
caught glimpses of the sun of eternity shining 
on the hills of Heaven. That voice was not 
to speak again ; those eyes had bade their last 
good-night to the little school ; the hands that 
had ached under the work they did were for- 
ever at rest ; the heart that had centered itself 
on the redemption of a wanderer was broken. 
Job was again friendless. George Holmes was 
motherless. 


A Mysterious Providence. 


*39 


VIII. 

A MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCE. 

^HEN the boy at length realized that 
jjryv he was alone with the dead, and with a 
man well-nigh insane, he was for a time 
bewildered. His first thought was of George, 
and that he must be sent for. But he dare 
not leave the house to go in quest of any one, 
and he had never had any communication 
with the families down stairs. Perhaps some 
one would come in. Mrs. Holmes had had 
many callers of late. So he sat down again 
by the bedside, feeling that there was no 
place so dear now in the world to him. The 
hours passed. The street lamps were lighted. 
The husband still sat in his chair. No one 
came. 

“ I must write to George,” said Job as he 
lighted the gas. He no longer felt afraid. 
His fear, indeed, had been the fear of sorrow. 
But how to tell George the sad story Job did 
not know, It had not been long that he had 


140 Boys and Girls. 

been able to write, and he was a blunt boy at 
his best. The news would have to go on its 
errand sharp-cut, biting. 

He drew a little table up beside the bed 
and carefully placed upon it his writing ma- 
terials. As he sat down he glanced through 
his tears at the silent one. Her arms had fall- 
en from her bosom, and, extended on the bed, 
they looked tired. “ I can do it for you,” 
murmured Job, and he began his task. 

“ Dear George: Youre mother wants you 
to come home. Y oure father is here. Perhaps 
I ought ter say that youre mother cant set up. 
George, I mite as well tell you first as last, 
youre poor mother is dede and ther is no 
one yet to look after her but me. Pleas 
come as fast as you can. 

“ Your fatheful frende, JOB.” 

Job read his letter over and over, trying to 
find out what was the matter with it. That 
it did not read like the letters George had 
sent home he knew full well. But his mind, 
fatigued now with the weight of care that had 
been pressing upon it the last few hours, could 
frame nothing better. So at length putting 


A Mysterious Providence. 141 

the message into an envelope, which he directed 
in crude, immense letters, he went softly down 
stairs, and, going to the corner, deposited his 
message in the little box. 

There was nothing to do now but to wait. 
He looked into the adjoining room. The 
husband had lain down on the sofa and 
was asleep. Job took his seat again beside 
the bed, and throughout the long night he 
sat there, occasionally falling into a fitful 
slumber disturbed by the scenes of the after- 
noon, which mingled confusedly with his 
dreams of selling the morning papers. There 
was one less boy the next day to go through 
the cars and to stand on the corners earning 
his daily bread. When the school children 
came, at nine o’clock, Job met the younger 
ones and sent them to their homes not to re- 
turn for a week. They went their way sub- 
missively, but the older ones insisted on know- 
ing all. So over and over he had to tell his 
pitiful story. So soon as one of the older boys 
arrived Job sent him for Aunt Winifred, who 
had been an almost daily visitor at the little 
school. She was out when he arrived, and so 
it was nearly noon before she reached the 
lonely house, 


142 


Boys and Girls. 


Mr. Holmes, meanwhile, had wakened from 
his slumber. His mind was confused, yet it 
had a sense of something wrong. Ever since 
he had returned to his wife he had alternated 
between days of perfect sanity in which his 
soul was agonized with remorse, and days 
when he seemed hardly responsible for what 
he said or did. He tried in vain on that 
morning to recall any fact of the preceding 
day. It was a blank. He began after awhile 
to wonder in a dull way why his wife did not 
come to him as was her wont. He was hun- 
gry. After waiting what seemed an endless 
time he rose, dressed himself, and, sullen and 
revengeful, left his bedroom and went into 
the dining-room, where he found no cheerful 
breakfast-table, not even a fire in the grate. 

Job came in presently with a pale, swollen 
face, his arms filled with kindling-wood. 
Something about the boy made Mr. Holmes 
regard him steadfastly. He passed his hand 
across his brow confusedly, and then, his act 
of the preceding day seeming for the first time 
to come to him with any force, he asked Job, 
“ Did I hurt my wife ? ” 

Job’s honest eyes flashed angrily for a min- 
ute. Then he remembered the unwavering 

* 


A Mysterious Providence. 143 

love the patient wife had shown ; his heart 
well-nigh bursting over her cruel death, and 
yet at the same time filled with pity for her 
sake for the drunkard. He replied, but gently, 
“ Yes, you hurt her.” 

“ Where is she ? ” after a pause. 

Job slowly laid his kindlings down, rose, 
brushed the wood-dust from his clothing, and 
then, seeing that there was nothing else he 
could do before answering, he said, pointing 
to the room, “ In there.” 

Mr. Holmes followed the direction of the 
fingerless hand and slowly walked toward the 
door. He paused on the threshold, seized 
with an undefinable fear. Then he opened 
the door, closed it softly after him, and looked 
around. He thought, in a queer kind of a way, 
that every thing looked very cold and neat. 
His eyes at last sought the bed. There she 
lay ! How straight ! How quiet ! How un- 
ruffled her pillow ! Outside the covering, and 
the room so cold and the sash wide open. He 
walked across the room and closed the win-i 
dow, and then approached the bed, his face 
gradually yet surely gaining an expression of 
fearful intelligence. 

How tenderly, O how tenderly he lifted the 


144 


Boys and Girls. 


stiffened hand, and in the tones of long ago 
whispered, “ Miriam.” There was, indeed, 
no color in her cheek, but then it was always 
pale, and the room was so icy that his teeth 
chattered. “ Miriam, wake up ! ” and he laid his 
face against hers. He sprang up then with a 
groan. It was a lifeless face. And there on 
the quiet forehead, with its serene brows 
drooping as if they had ached for years with 
the pressure of unshed tears, was the wound 
that had released the longing soul. 

He bowed his head upon the silent breast 
that bore uncomplainingly this last burden of 
all the long sad years, and wept in uncontrol- 
lable and remorseful anguish. 

Liquor ! Liquor had done it all. Liquor 
had made him a murderer, and of her whose 
image had remained undimmed in his mem- 
ory when the recollections of child and honor 
had faded like a dream. He himself had sev- 
ered the last link that bound him to the pure 
and good. With an awful cry for help and 
pardon, a cry that made Job stand still in 
horror in the adjoining room, he called in the 
most piteous and tender tones: “ Miriam, my 
wife, my dear wife, Miriam, wake up, wake 
up ! ” And the only answer, the reproach of 


A Mysterious Providence. 145 

the solemn stillness of death, cut through his 
heart like cold steel. 

His paroxysm spent itself after awhile, but 
left him rational. There was a wild, awful 
dread about that room, and the vengeance he 
had wrecked on himself was past enduring. 

All of his life now spread before him like a 
panorama of brilliant colors. The scenes of 
his boyhood, his early married life, his infant 
boy, and the orgies, the wanderings, the deso- 
lation of the succeeding years, seemed to 
stand out on the canvas of his imagination, 
and each one to reproach him with the word, 
“ Murder ! ” 

Where was his boy? When would he 
come ? Would he notice the father whom he 
had never known ? Turn his thoughts which 
way he would there was nothing for him but 
agony. 

So he sat there three weary, endless hours, 
slowly dragging their weary rounds. There 
was no sound save his own stifled moans un- 
til the door-knob was softly turned and the 
door gently opened. 

The wretched man lifted his eyes and saw 
before him a kind, serene, yet horrified face. 
There stood Aunt Winifred— the tragical 


Boys and Girls. 


146 

story as told by a trembling, frightened child 
nerving her to meet a man who had killed his 
wife. 

As he lifted his eyes and saw the oval face 
crowned by soft black hair, regarding him, 
notwithstanding the horrified fear, with pity, 
he rose with an unutterable longing for a word 
of sympathy from some kindly human soul. 

Methinks that those who, in the hidden fu- 
ture, find themselves in that dread place called 
hell, will experience the greatest of all woes in 
the separation from those who are purified from 
temptation even. Misery is lightened here on 
earth by the thought that the darkest cloud 
has a silver lining, that the sun must shine, 
that summer is only a few months behind win- 
ter, that hope lives with life, that God is 
merciful. 

As he sat there so long alone with the dead 
it had seemed as though earth were trans- 
formed into an awful place of divine retribu- 
tion. The sweet Christian face of Aunt Win- 
ifred came like a dove of peace, and all of 
the good impulses of his fallen nature reached 
out instinctively. 

She approached the bed, took a chair beside 
it, and contemplated, with deep emotion, all 


A Mysterious Providence. 147 

that was left of the mother and wife who had 
lived such an intense, sad life. 

“ I killed her! ” said Mr. Holmes in hollow, 
remorseful tones. “ I killed her ! ” 

“The Jews killed Christ, and he said, ‘ Fa- 
ther, forgive them, they know not what they 
do.’ And God says that ‘ though your sins 
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,’ ” 
said Aunt Winifred. 

“ My sin is dyed too deep. A blood-stain 
it is, and it never can be washed out. Why, 
the stains in Holyrood Abbey of Rizzio’s 
blood are there yet, and he was murdered two 
hundred years ago. My wife’s blood has crim- 
soned my conscience, and it will remain fresh 
there forever and forever. I beg of you to 
give me over to the law, to force me to the 
sharpest misery. I am a murderer! a mur- 
derer /” and his face paled to a ghastlier 
whiteness as he repeated the awful word. 

Aunt Winifred saw that he was on the verge 
of insanity. 

“ I want to prepare your wife for her burial. 
Leave me alone with her for awhile. You 
want that all should be done decently and in 
order for one whom you loved, do you not ? ” 

“ Yes, yes ! ” 


14B 


Boys and Girls. 


She lost all fear of him, he seemed so be- 
seeching and helpless. Seeing him totter, she 
took his arm in her firm grasp, and led him 
to an eastern room into which the bright spring 
sunshine came flooding. 

“ There, sit here and pray to God. He is 
a God of peace and mercy, and he will surely 
forgive if you honestly repent.” 

She returned to the darkened room and 
prepared the remains for burial, shedding 
tears for Job, who, now that his work seemed 
done, had crouched beside the grate and was 
making vain efforts to suppress his tears. 

The childish letter had, meanwhile, reached 
its destination. A telegram would have been 
less harsh in its effect. Somehow we expect 
in a letter a preparation for sad news. Tele- 
grams, where one is not expecting to receive 
them, are a foreboding before they are even 
opened ; one has time while holding the yel- 
low envelope to nerve himself for the worst. 
Aunt Winifred, learning that Job had mailed 
his letter the night before, and knowing that 
it would reach its destination before a dispatch 
could, saw that there was nothing else for her 
to do but to receive George as tenderly as 
possible when he should come. 


A Mysterious Providence. 149 

It was a sunny morning. Although the 
trees were naked, yet their long arms, softened 
by the golden light and swaying idly back and 
forth in the spring breeze, seemed to whisper 
of coming leaves and blossoms, of deep blue 
skies and grassy fields, of a whole summer of 
warmth and glow. 

George sat by his open window with his 
astronomy before him, and on his table quite 
a display of geometrical figures, prominent 
among which were circles. The night before 
he had been up till late, studying the stars. 
This morning he was working out his obser- 
vations. 

As his eye took in the sweep of the horizon 
and the curving proportions of all things 
looked at from a distance, and then fell upon 
those circles on the table, he thought of God, 
whose existence, like their circumference, had 
neither beginning nor end. “ His days go on, 
his days go on,” he murmured, as the burden 
of De Profundis floated through his mind. 
“ Now if I only had Ben’s faith and love for 
the God he believes in, how happy I should be 
in the thought that the Creator is so bound- 
less in his existence.” On the night of the 
Christmas party at Mr. Winthrop’s, while tell- 
10 


Boys and Girls. 


150 

in g the children stories, he had felt sad be- 
cause the truths that he presented so ably to 
them fell upon his soul like some old, old story 
grown stale through repetition. All through 
his college life he had felt the want of some- 
thing. His character, in the estimation of 
faculty and students, was just as good as Ben s, 
his generosity and stanch support of correct 
principles just as decided. But when his 
principles were ridiculed, while his grit and 
strong will kept him firm, there was every 
time in his secret soul some such question aris- 
ing as, “ Does it pay?” He felt that there 
would come a day when the habits taught him 
by his mother would wear away under the 
friction of opposition, unless they were found- 
ed on an authority higher than any human opin- 
ion or natural good tendencies. Thus far his 
love for his mother had been like a pillar of 
fire by night and a cloudy pillar by day. What 
if she should be taken away and he be left utter- 
ly alone in the world to achieve the fortune and 
name to which he aspired, and, at the same 
time, keep his soul unspotted and the sanctu- 
ary of all noble and lofty impulses. 

“ Could he do it ? ” 

“ No ! ” 


A Mysterious Providence. 15 i 

George had what is the rarest of all elements 
in our weak human nature, that is, honesty- 
in judgment of self. 

A shudder seemed to creep over the bright 
sunshine, although there was no cloud in the 
sky, while before him rose visions as real as 
though tangible as the books and furniture 
around him. The honors clustering about a 
law case brilliantly won, the eclat investing a 
judge’s chair, the praise that echoes through 
the press of a nation over a political victory, 
the weight of conclusive eloquence dropping 
from his lips in the Senate of his country, were 
probabilities that he had determined should 
prove realities. 

While climbing up the long ascent, would 
he never pause to gather the emoluments that 
come to covert and dishonest dealing in fees, 
riches, and position? Would he not set ut- 
terly aside his opinions of right and wrong 
should they stand, like a mountain, in the 
road to his ambition? Now, a boy at col- 
lege, and his best friend animated by a lofty 
Christian principle, he might; but then — 
George trembled. In the ardor of his thoughts 
he rose. 

There was a knock at the door, and instantly 


152 Boys and Girls. 

after Ben’s face was thrust in and then his 
whole body. 

“ Letters for both of us this morning. What 
new correspondence have you been contract- 
ing?” holding up Job’s letter with its sprawl- 
ing, irregular writing. 

George laughed as he glanced at the enve- 
lope, and was so much amused that he forgot 
for an instant to look within. “ From New 
York,” he said finally, and then, while his face 
was still wreathed in smiles, he tore it open. 

“ It ought to bring you down from the 
clouds, where you evidently were when I en- 
tered,” said Ben, as George’s eyes lighted on 
the short, blunt missive. 

An ashy paleness crept about his lips. The 
letter dropped from his hands. “ Ben, O Ben, 
I have lost every thing; I have lost my 
mother.” 

He turned around. He was not the boy to 
weep or make a demonstration. He just stood 
there beside the open window while his eyes 
took in every little detail in the view before 
him as if they must be noticed for life or death. 

Neither was Ben a boy for words. The sor- 
row came home to him also, for George’s 
mother was a woman that every manly boy 


A Mysterious Providence. 153 

would admire and love. Irrespective of Mrs. 
Holmes, Ben loved George warmly, and he 
longed to comfort him. But he did not know 
how. 

The silence of loving hearts, the voiceless 
attention to our wishes, is often more soothing 
than the kindest words. George felt so, when, 
turning at length, his gaze met Ben’s large, 
expressive eyes, full of tenderness and sym- 
pathy. 

“ Ben, I wish I had your religion. I feel 
savage with grief and disappointment, and I 
see no help out of the darkness.” 

“ George, pray. I will pray for you. * God 
watch between us while we are absent one 
from another.’ ” 

Ben asked George what he needed before 
starting home, and then, making the necessary 
preparations for a friend who had just set his 
feet into deep waters, he accompanied him to 
the train, and bade him as affectionate a “ God- 
speed ” as one boy ever bestowed upon another. 

Job answered George’s ring. The latter, 
moved by the boy’s sad face, and feeling the 
touch of sympathy, stooped and kissed him. 

Mrs. Winthrop, though George was tall and 
manly, received him like a mother, and broke 


154 


Boys and Girls. 


down all the reserve with which he had been 
trying to steel his heart. It was she who re- 
lated, in as softened and delicate a manner as 
possible, the fact that the father, toward whom 
he had always felt revengeful, was the cause 
of his mother’s death, and was at that mo- 
ment in the house. 

George sprang up defiant, his eyes flashing. 
“ He shall not stay under this roof another 
minute! He has been a curse to my whole 
life. It is unjust. God is cruel to me,” he 
cried, his belief in some kind of a divine power 
finding utterance. “ See me,” he continued, 
“ how thin I am. I have worked until my 
brain seemed bursting. I have denied myself 
the pleasures of other boys of my age, and I 
have done it cheerfully whenever I thought of 
my mother, my one consolation in life. I can- 
not love, much less respect, the man who forced 
me to this and my mother to the life of a 
slave,” he continued, when Mrs. Winthrop en- 
deavored to interrupt him. “ He is a brute, 
and he must accept the lot that he has carved 
out for himself.” 

“ George, George, be quiet, till I tell you 
that your mother told me that, could she feel 
sure that her husband would rise from his 


A Mysterious Providence. 155 

ruin, she could die happy. You must finish 
the work she began. You have a proud spirit, 
a rebellious spirit, my boy, and, unless it is 
curbed, greater grief still awaits you. I do 
not wish to chide. God knows my heart aches 
for you ! But God is good, is merciful ; and 
even the disgrace and sorrow under which 
you writhe may be his kindest blessings for 
you and those that you need. Your father is 
your father, do what you may to disown him, 
and you are in nature like him whose exist- 
ence seems to you a curse. George, my boy, 
look upon him as yourself gone astray. For 
the sake of your mother, love him, care for 
him, and raise him with yourself. Consider 
that the physician immediately pronounced 
him in such a state as to be irresponsible for the 
deed he has committed. The coroner’s ver- 
dict frees him from criminality.” 

“ Have you ever hated, Mrs. Winthrop ? ” 

“ No,” she answered, surprised and startled 
at his tone. 

“ I hate my father. I hate him with as 
much hatred as I love my mother.” He 
clenched his hands. 

“ What will you do, George, now that your 
mother is dead ? ” 


156 


Boys and Girls. 


“Do? ’’and his hands dropped despond- 
ently. “ I would like to die and be with her, 
and away from this unsatisfying life. It has 
been nothing but sorrow and disappointment.’* 

The anger had momentarily faded from 
his expressive face, leaving it worn and sad in 
the extreme. 

“ It seems to me that I see the work that 
God’s own finger is writing this moment on 
your destiny. He has called away the one 
on whom you would have lavished the world, 
were it in your possession, and has left, with- 
out another person on whom he has a claim, 
your father to you. 

“ Your father is the victim of the crying sin 
of our country. You have been aspiring to 
political honors. Be one of those brave souls 
that the women need among men, and, through 
these years of your minority, study the aspects 
of a question that sooner or later will give rise 
to a new party. From books, the streets, hos- 
pitals, and your father seek to learn the prop- 
erties of liquor, its myriad influences, and 
the nature of laws necessary to lift the curse 
under which America to-day is groaning. 
You and Ben and Bentie have longed to find 
your work and do it. Yours meets you all the 


A Mysterious Providence. 157 

way, and then you flash defiance in God’s face. 
What if God needs you, George ? What if, 
proving unfaithful to his call, at the last great 
day you shall meet the reproach of your 
mother, the eternal ruin of your father, and 
the sentence of your Maker, ‘You knew your 
duty and you did it not ? ’ What if, doing your 
duty by your fellow-men in this trying par- 
ticular, you shall enter Heaven the leader of 
a countless procession of souls redeemed 
through your instrumentality ? Freedom un- 
der law, harmony, Christianity, are the watch- 
words of the ideal statesman. Prove yourself 
equal to the emergencies of your position by 
adopting them as your motto.” 

Mrs. Winthrop’s voice was tremulous with 
her earnestness. Its sweet, impressive tones 
thrilled the listening boy. 

“ If I could know that there is a heaven. If 
I could know that there is a God who con- 
cerns himself with what we do, there might be 
some hope.” 

“Act now, act always, as if there were. 
Study God’s dealings with you, and study 
yourself as if you were another person. The 
twilight will soon dawn, and then will come 
the glorious noonday of certainty.” 


158 


Boys and Girls. 


This appeal reached him. It was new to 
him, and yet in a line with previous estimates 
he had brought to bear upon himself when 
comparing and judging of his rank as a scholar 
and of his moral character. 

“ Now George/’ she continued, finding that 
she had at length reached his judgment, “ I 
want you to promise me, as your mother’s 
nearest friend, and because I know that she 
would ask the same, could she speak, that 
you will be resigned in manner if not in heart, 
and receive your father as a son should do. 
I want you to promise, also, that you will try 
to exercise faith in God, who, I know, is kind 
and just, and makes all things work together 
for good to those who love him.” 

She had taken his hands, and, while holding 
them in her firm, gentle grasp, asked him so 
earnestly, that, longing all the time to believe 
as she did, he promised. 


An Experiment. 


i59 


IX. 

AN EXPERIMENT. 

N Sixth Avenue is a fancy store, where 
are sold work-baskets, German toys, 
ribbons, Milton jewelry, ready-made 
hats — in fact, every thing that could possibly 
come under the head of “ notions.” 

It is the month of March, the day for several 
spring openings. This fancy store, in com- 
mon with some of the large Broadway estab- 
lishments, has put on its best dress, thrown 
open its doors, and, to all intents and purposes, 
sung the song beginning, “ Will you walk into 
my parlor, said the spider to the fly?” 

The dispensers of all this assortment of 
what-nots are a short, fat, roly-poly man and a 
boy. The man, though quite important after 
his style, does not begin to compare in general 
volume of manners with the boy, who is four 
feet six inches in height, quite stout, with 
pink cheeks, blue eyes, and hair parted in the 
middle. The boy presents to customers a 


1 60 Boys and Girls. 

formidable expanse of shirt bosom, and also 
displays on his person a blue tie whose long 
ends are pulled through a ring, enormous cuff- 
buttons, and immaculate boots. 

It is about half-past eight in the morning. 
The boy is lightly skipping around the two 
long, narrow counters and down the aisle be- 
tween them, brandishing, here and there, a 
feather-duster. He occasionally pauses before 
quite a lengthy mirror filling up a small re- 
cess, in order to adjust the ring on his neck- 
tie, as it is inclined to slip. He finds it neces- 
sary, moreover, to frequently smooth down the 
stray hairs which the feather-duster from time 
to time sets in motion. He does it, however, 
without the slightest reluctance, and every 
time he turns from the mirror he looks more 
self-satisfied than before. 

The tide that sweeps down the avenue 
drops, now and then, a wave at the notion- 
store ; then the dexterity and address with 
which the boy displays handkerchiefs, ties, 
‘jewelry, and toys, is a sight worth seeing. 

While he is selling and others are buying I 
will call to your remembrance a small youth, 
named Charley, whom his mother, wishing 
him to have every educational advantage, 


An Experiment. 161 

brought to New York and placed in the gram- 
mar-school that Trot attended. 

Charley might have been seen for the space 
of a month with Trot for a not infrequent 
companion, daily pursuing his way to school 
with book-strap in one hand and lunch-box in 
the other. But as soon as the novelty of the 
new books and the new school wore off, he 
acted as much out of his element as a boy 
well could. 

Night after night, unless his mother abso- 
lutely refused to listen, he appeared before 
her with most harrowing stories of long les- 
sons, severe teachers, and slights, and with 
petitions to go to this place or that. Like 
many another boy who had gone to the city, 
Charley had to get acclimated. One would 
have thought his life limited to three days, 
and that in these three days he was obliged to 
compress all that was to be seen or heard in 
New York. To have heard him tell of where 
he had been one would have thought him 
ubiquitous. He seemed to be transformed. 
He was not at all the quiet, trusting, modest 
little Charley of a year before. He had not 
only grown out of most of his clothes of that 
period, but out of most of his common sense. 


Boys and Girls. 


162 

His mother was as much perplexed about him 
as a hen over chickens that will go into the 
water. At last, in despair over his oft-re- 
peated complaints, his dilatoriness in study, 
his propensity to wander, and his sighs to do 
as so many other boys, “ nice ones/' of his age 
did — go into business — led her to conclude 
that perhaps the best thing for him at present 
was to remove him from school. Boys and 
girls who dislike school are obstacles dreaded 
by teachers, and they are a torment to their 
parents. So, with Mr. Stanton’s and Mr. Win- 
throp’s aid, she quietly sought for Charley a 
position in a store, and one night, when his 
woes were more voluminous than usual, told 
him that he need not return to school the next 
day, but must then begin as clerk in a notion- 
store. 

At the time this chapter opens he had been 
for some time performing his new duties, and, 
with one exception, they seemed to fill the 
measure of his ambition. As a boy who 
was not obliged to work for his living, he felt 
it altogether beneath his dignity on cold win- 
ter and raw spring mornings to rise when only 
the laboring portion of the city was astir, eat 
his breakfast alone, and go down town to the 


An Experiment. 163 

work of taking down shutters, attending to 
fires, and, in fact, doing what seemed much on 
a par with that which chambermaids in private 
houses busy themselves with. But, then, he 
was in business. This thought invariably led 
him to stand-up so straight that he bent back- 
ward, to hold his chin just a little higher, and 
to indulge in a drop or two more of perfume. 
He not only musked his clothing, but he 
ate musk-drops to give his breath a pleasant 
odor. 

If you ask me why his mother allowed him 
to be so silly, I can only say that, when Char- 
ley had scarlet fever, measles, and chicken-pox, 
she found the surest and safest remedy for those 
diseases was to bring them as soon as possi- 
ble to the surface. She discovered, a little 
too late, or she would certainly not have gone 
to the expense of taking him to New York, 
that he had to be afflicted with still another 
infantile disease, a species of insane desire to 
become a man and act a man while he was 
still an inexperienced and ignorant boy. Her 
experience led her to treat this malady in the 
same way she had his other childish com- 
plaints. She, therefore, placed him where he 
would come in contact with real men, meet 


Boys and Girls. 


164 

with rebuffs, and eventually come to a knowl- 
edge of all true success through comparing his 
incapacity and ignorance with the capacity 
and wisdom of mature business people. 

On the March day in question, Charley, hav- 
ing finished his dusting, and being more than 
satisfied with his appearance, as revealed by the 
conveniently arranged mirror, devoted himself 
with so much deftness to customers and sold 
so many goods that his master congratulated 
him on his prospects for a mercantile career 
in the “ notion ” line, and asked his advice as 
to the expediency of buying a contemplated 
bill of goods. 

This was sufficient to lead the embryo mer- 
chant prince to the conclusion that his suc- 
cess was already achieved, and to instantly as- 
sume arrogant airs of authority and ownership 
exceedingly impressive upon all small cus- 
tomers, excepting one, who toward noon made 
her appearance. 

She was a slender, graceful little damsel of 
eight years, remarkable, at first sight, for a 
pair of very keen eyes that saw every thing at 
a glance. They immediately fell upon Char- 
ley, who stood, hands in his pocket, leaning 
against the counter, and looking, in his atti- 


An Experiment. 165 

tude, as if he were all shirt-bosom and blue 
neck-tie. 

“ Good-morning,” said Charley as he bowed 
with quite a grand flourish of his smoothly 
combed head. 

The customer returned his salute with 
something of a wondering look, and said rather 
curtly, 

“ Don’t act so, Charley.” 

“ How?” and the young shop-keeper raised 
his faintly outlined eyebrows. 

“ O, I wish you wouldn’t put on ; you don’t 
seem a bit natural.” 

Charley began to whistle, and then, after fin- 
ishing his tune, said, with infinite condescen- 
sion, “ I can’t always be a little boy, Trot.” 

“ Well, you are one yet ; you are only twelve 
years old, if you are tall and in a store. My 
mother says, she does, I heard her tell papa so,” 
she continued, “ that your mother put you in a 
store to punish you for your nonsense. You 
will get tired of it after awhile, and then you’ll 
see.” 

Having delivered her verdict, she looked 
askance at Charley. 

The roly-poly man, who had overheard the 

conversation, laughed till his fat sides were in 
1 1 


Boys and Girls. 


i 66 

a quiver, and, rubbing his hands together, 
said : “ That’s the little girl to take a young 
gentleman’s pride down. Give him some 
more advice.” 

Trot, who had been born with a mania for 
giving people advice, needed no more urg- 
ing. 

“ Every body is laughing at you for your 
airs, Charley. Your mother says that you 
will have to stay here till you get so tired of 
selling notions ’’—Trot prolonged the words 
with such effect that the fat man laughed 
louder than ever — “ that you will do any 
thing to stop.” 

“ I never shall get tired,” said Charley 
stoutly. 

“ Yes, you will,” sagely retorted Trot, “ when 
all the little boys of your age [“ little ” aggra- 
vatingly emphasized] are big and know enough 
to go to college, you will be an ignoramus, and 
fit for nothing else but to sell notions. Then 
you will be sorry. I came around to show 
you the prize I received for spelling,” she 
said, naively changing the subject. “ I have 
been promoted. My teacher says that in two 
years, if I keep on as I have begun, I can 
leave the primary department. Then I will 


An Experiment. 


167 

be ahead of you,” and the blue eyes snapped 
triumphantly. 

Somehow the gay neck-tie wore a limp ap- 
pearance, and Charleys egotism was replaced 
by a crest-fallen rosy look at the close of 
Trot’s tirade, that gave the “notion” business 
quite a different aspect. 

His mother had so carefully refrained from 
any persuasion and reproofs and avoided even 
the mention of books, that Charley, although 
knowing that she in the beginning had placed 
him in the store because he was dissatisfied, 
supposed that it was also because she really 
believed all of his fault-finding reports. 

Trot’s version threw a new light upon the 
subject. He suddenly saw the rosy clouds 
that had invested his winter’s work with so 
much boyish romance fade, and when she, 
having bought some needles and thread, dis- 
appeared with quite a superior nod of her 
flaxen head, he looked around the store with 
a feeling that it was not, after all, the most 
important place in New York, and he, a boy 
on the high road to success. 

Yet it must not be denied that he had a 
real fondness for buying and selling. Had it 
come somewhat later, his mother would have 


Boys and Girls. 


i 68 

encouraged his ambitions. But she knew that 
in this age of general intelligence business 
men, to stand prominently among other men, 
need a larger amount of book-knowledge than 
did their ancestors. As Charley was her only 
son, and, therefore, the one on whom all her 
future hopes were placed, she was deeply 
pained at what seemed a constitutional aver- 
sion to books and study. She accordingly de- 
cided to put him into a store, hoping that the 
time would come when pride, if nothing else, 
would drive him to a few years of close ap- 
plication to books. 

He kept Trot’s reproof to himself for several 
weeks, but it bore its fruits. He began to 
feel, now that his suspicions were aroused, that 
his mother never read to him any more 
because she did not think he knew enough to 
appreciate her efforts. He fidgeted, colored, 
and gave the most confused answers when Mr. 
Winthrop asked him what he thought of 
prices. One evening, while dining with his 
mother at Mr. Stanton’s, when that gentle- 
man asked him if he had a good supply of 
work-baskets on hand, he surprised everybody 
by pouring forth a sudden and angry torrent 
of tears, thereby quite disfiguring his radiant 


An Experiment. 169 

neck-tie and making little canals down his rosy 
cheeks. 

“ Why, why, Charley, are work-baskets so 
pathetic a subject as to make you cry?” said 
Mr. Stanton, much surprised at this unex- 
pected outburst. 

Just at that moment his eye, by chance, fell 
upon Trot, who sat behind her plate, erect as 
a little Puritan, her mouth pursed into an 
expression of conscious superiority, her eyes 
fixed on Charley in triumphant condemna- 
tion. 

“ Trot, do you know any thing about this ? ” 

“ Perhaps I do,” she replied, in sententious 
wisdom. 

“ Tell me all.” 

“ Charley puts on so many airs, that I just 
told him one day what we all thought of 
him.” 

“ We ! ” 

“ Yes, I told him that he was an ignoramus, 
and so he is.” 

Charley’s sobs redoubled at this verdict. 
Mr. Stanton, with difficulty suppressing a 
smile, and not looking at Trot, said to Charley, 
“ Go to the library and bring me a small ruler 
that- you will find on my desk.” 


i/o Boys and Girls. 

While wiping his eyes and sobbing by turns, 
he performed the errand, wondering mean- 
while what Mr. Stanton proposed to do. Re- 
turning, he handed the ruler to Trot’s father, 
who, calling the little girl to his side, said 
gravely : 

“ My daughter, you are quite too small to 
tell other people of their faults, and you are 
a naughty girl for going from home and re- 
porting what you hear there. You have 
been such a little ignoramus yourself, that I 
shall have to whip you.” 

Trot looked up pleadingly, her blue eyes 
suffused with tears. But her father was firm. 
Down came the ruler on the little hand, one, 
two, three, four, five, six times, and then, her 
pride breaking down, she wept as unrestrain- 
edly as Charley. 

“ Now go and ask Charley’s forgiveness.” 

Not daring to disobey, she went up to his 
side and asked, quite humbly, “ Charley, 
please forgive me.” 

A laughable reconciliation, which is hardly 
necessary to describe, ensued, and finally, 
good-humor being restored, the dinner pro- 
ceeded without further interruption. 

Charley, however, felt all the time, down in 


An Experiment. 


171 

the depths of his heart, that he had gotten at 
the actual state of his affairs through Trot’s 
revelation. And although he said nothing, 
his new thoughts and mortification were work- 
ing a change, the nature of which will be re- 
vealed in our next volume. 


172 


Boys and Girls. 


X. 

THE SHOP-GIRL. 

(Sg)ENTIE had come home for her summer 
vacation in excellent health, her room- 
ing with Adah having been the only 
disheartening lesson that she had learned. 
Her father, wishing to make the summer as 
conducive to her general improvement as her 
year at college had been, consulted with Aunt 
Winifred, and they finally decided to have 
Bentie see life at a fashionable watering-place. 

“How do you fancy the idea, daughter ? ” 
asked Mr. Winthrop. 

“ I like it, papa. I want change and variety.” 
She mused a few minutes, and then, suddenly 
looking up, said, “ Cannot you and I, auntie, 
go alone to some place where nobody will 
know me, even if you should be recognized ? 
I have another problem to solve,” she laugh- 
ingly continued, her aunt appearing puzzled. 
“ I have been complimented and petted all 
my life because I am Bentie Winthrop. Now, 


The Shop-girl. 


i/3 

while we are gone, suppose you call me by 
my middle names— Claribel Elton— and that 
I satisfy myself with my plain college ward- 
robe.” 

Bentie s design was to find out how much 
of the attention she received was due to her 
position in society and to her fine clothing. 
It was a somewhat strange notion, but having 
once thought of it she determined to put it 
into practice if she could get the consent of 
her father and of her Aunt Winifred. 

It was finally agreed that she appear in 
the plainest apparel, and be known as “ Clari- 
bel Elton,” and let people draw what infer- 
ences they pleased. That some afterward mis- 
took her for a shop-girl whom Mrs. Ruther- 
ford had kindly taken with her for a vacation 
was not part of the original plan. It was only 
one of the “ inferences ” of the situation. 

We cannot, however, approve of deception 
in any form, and we think that in this in- 
stance Bentie made a mistake. She ought 
not to have designed to pass for what she 
was not ; for though she said not a word she 
acted a deceitful part, and that is always 
wrong. She suffered for it, too, as we shall 
presently see. 


Boys and Girls. 


i74 

Bentie had more of a trial before her than 
she well understood. But her summer expe- 
rience taught her a lesson of which before she 
really had only a remote conception, and it 
was that, in most cases, adversity shows a 
man, woman, or child, the difference between 
true and false friendship. 

Bentie had been at Stapleton a week, and 
had grown so accustomed to the new state 
of affairs that she felt no fear of betraying 
herself. Fortunately, also, for her scheme, 
there were no families at any of the hotels 
whom she had ever met before. 

Claribel’s dtbut, as Aunt Winifred intended, 
was entirely unaffected and perfectly simple. 
The evening of their arrival was a wet one, 
and the next morning revealed sodden, heavy 
clouds hanging low over the landscape and 
shutting out every thing but the few feet of 
turf in front of the hotel. The sea air took all 
of the curl, and it seemed to Claribel all of 
the color, from her shining auburn hair. There 
was an incipient fever sore appearing on the 
side of her nose, and, try as she would, her 
ruffles looked limp, her skirts hung closely 
about her slender figure, her rich coil of hair 
fell darkly on one side. Aunt Winifred, how- 


The Shop-girl. 


i 75 

ever, cheered her by telling her that she was 
really a plain-looking girl. With this assur- 
ance she followed the compact, stately form 
of her chaperon into the large dining-room. 

Mrs. Rutherford, with her gray curls, which 
were just then so fashionable, and her plain but 
rich black silk, was an elegant-looking woman, 
and commanded attention. But Bentie, in her 
simple cambric, her merry eyes subdued, and 
her nose aglow with the lurking sore, could 
readily have been taken for the elder lady’s 
“ companion.” 

Thus she found her place. Once in it, every 
body, to the best of his or her ability, helped 
her to keep it. 

It is doubtful whether all of her determina- 
tion and independence would have been a 
match for her mortification and loneliness, had 
not the thought of her father and the “ prob- 
lem ” held her steadfast. More than once she 
went to her wardrobe to contemplate two or 
three elegant suits held in reserve. As if taking 
a dose of bitter medicine, she would turn away 
and dress herself with studious simplicity, al- 
though taking care to avoid an eccentric or 
old-fashioned appearance. 

In accordance with her niece’s plans, a little 


Boys and Girls. 


176 

dexterity on Aunt Winifred’s part revealed 
her own standing and circumstances, two 
known factors needed to insure Bentie any at- 
tention in her disguise. 

One bright morning Claribel went to pay a 
call at the room adjoining her own, to visit a 
lady and her daughter who were assiduously 
cultivating Mrs. Rutherford’s acquaintance. 
They accordingly showed Claribel consider- 
able patronizing attention. 

“ What do you think of the Meridans ? ” 
asked Mrs. Jones, in the midst of some gos- 
siping conversation. “You know that they 
have position and are wealthy ” — the latter 
sentence spoken impressively as she saw Clar- 
ibel hesitate a minute. 

Mrs. Jones was sitting up in bed preparatory 
to taking a homeopathic dose which Maria, 
her daughter, was in the act of administering. 
There was the spoon extended, but mother 
and daughter sat with eyes directed to the 
slender, erect girl sitting on the foot of the 
bed. 

“ What do I think of them ? ” The brown- 
gray eyes dilated slightly, the firm but gentle 
mouth had just the glimmer of a twinkle 
round its corners, as Claribel responded : “ I 


The Shop-girl. 


i/7 


think Mrs. Meridan a very proper lady in- 
deed, as, of course, she ought to be, the mother 
of such a large family and having an example 
to set. Mr. Meridan is agreeable.” 

“ Proper ! Agreeable ! They are splendid ! 
And the children, the young ladies?” con- 
tinued Mrs. Jones inquisitively. 

“ O, they are rude ! ” 

Maria elevated her scanty eyebrows, and 
Mrs. Jones looked amazed. “A Meridan 
rude ! ” her not unkindly blue eyes exclaimed, 
and Maria said, almost breathlessly, “ What do 
you mean ? ” 

“ Only that they had not known me a day, 
and Claribelled me. And when I asked what 
a jib was, Miss Emma exclaimed, ‘What a 
loon you are ! ’ Then they finger my cloth- 
ing and jewelry, and offer advice, and borrow, 
and all that sort of thing, as if we were the 
oldest acquaintances.” 

Claribel found herself beginning to talk a 
little excitedly, and stopped suddenly. 

“ O ! ” said Maria, in a prolonged and re- 
lieved tone ; “ they will get over that — must — 
they hold such a position and are so very 
wealthy ; hardly more than children yet, 
either.” 


i;8 


Boys and Girls. 


“ Well,” said Claribel very determinedly ; 
“ Miss Emma is eighteen, and ought to show 
symptoms of ladyhood. I have failed to see 
any. 

“ Miss Elton, I think you are mistaken,” 
said Mrs. Jones, sharply. “She is the most 
perfectly self-possessed creature of her age I 
ever saw, and really manages gentlemen charm- 
ingly. Quite a little coquette.” 

“Coquetry is a feminine instinct; Dr. Hol- 
land says so,” said Maria a little peevishly, and 
with a furtive, would-be-bewitching expression 
at their young visitor. Maria was receiving 
attention from a gentleman of standing, and in 
consequence reading Timothy Titcomb’s let- 
ters, with what practical results her quotation 
shows. 

“ I do not think he had a Miss Meridan in 
mind when he wrote the passage,” said Clari- 
bel, her eyes flashing. “ In Dr. Holland’s es- 
timation it is character, and not wealth, or 
position, or coquetry, that makes a lady truly 
polite. Emma Meridan has about as much 
character as the jelly-fish we sail through when 
we are on the water.” 

Claribel bit her lips ; she was talking angrily. 
She dared not remain, and so, rising and tell- 


The Shop-girl. 


179 


in g Mrs. Jones that she hoped she would soon 
be well — Mrs. Jones was a watering-place in- 
valid — she left the room and went out on the 
wide, high piazza that overlooked a broad but 
almost land-locked ocean bay. 

The wind blew fresh, and as she walked up 
and down the excited color in her cheeks 
deepened, but her frank gray eyes grew once 
more kind and soft. 

After all it was just what she had come to 
Stapleton Bay for, to study character while she 
was resting. She had Aunt Winifred when 
she became disgusted. It was wonderful, the 
dexterous gossiping manner in which one lady 
had given another to understand that Miss 
Elton worked and had been given a vacation 
by her employer. That had been enough to 
ostracize our little friend with the Meridan 
family and a score of others. The married 
ladies patronized the “ rather nice-looking 
creature,” but secretly wondered how so aris- 
tocratic a lady as Mrs. Rutherford could bur- 
den her summer with the care of a “ shop-girl.” 
For gossip, without a particle of hesitation, 
decided that Bentie could be nothing else and 
at Stapleton should be nothing else. The old 
gentlemen thought her interesting and natural ; 


8o 


Boys and Girls. 


the young gentlemen, as a whole, thought 
nothing at all. 

So it happened that, during a whole week, 
she had had an exceedingly restful time, and, 
rather too sharply for a sentimental forgive- 
ness of the coldness and neglect bestowed up- 
on her, had realized that just a little of all the 
attention that had been lavished upon her from 
babyhood up had been paid for as it was 
given, or, that it was reaping an immense 
prospective interest. Up and down she walked, 
reasoning herself out of her anger, and tem- 
pering it into an honest indignation over the 
position which, she could not help feeling , was 
in a sense forced upon her. But on the bright 
day on which she had held the conversation 
we have narrated, the fever-sore had disap- 
peared, the pale cheeks were ruddy with ex- 
citement and exercise, the gray eyes were 
dancing to the spring of her step, and the 
bonny auburn hair was all in a quiver under 
the clear sunshine and the gay breeze. It 
floated and curled in a way that Dolly Varden 
might have envied. 

Perhaps Miss Emma Meridan did envy the 
shop-girl, for as she came around the side of 
the house and approached Bentie, an involun- 


The Shop-girl. 


i 8 i 


tary admiration shone out from her deep blue 
eyes. 

Miss Meridan lisped. She had red hair. 
Her eyes were very blue. Her complexion 
was very fresh. Her forehead and hands were 
much freckled. Her nose had a flat, pressed 
look, as if she had leaned her life-time “ with 
her face against the pane.” But her “ make- 
up ” was stylish and expensive. She wore 
diamond ear-rings always, and other things 
accordingly, and she had position and was 
wealthy. 

“ Claribel, Mitheth Rutherford thayth you 
are tho merry and jolly. I have waited for a 
week to thee it, and fear I mutht be disap- 
pointed.” 

“I require a kindred spirit,” gayly replied 
Claribel, as she passed on. 

Miss Meridan looked after her in sheer as- 
tonishment, and then, sauntering down the 
piazza to a group of ladies busy with their em- 
broidery and conversation, just in front of 
Mrs. Rutherford’s window, said, glancing back 
disdainfully at Claribel, who had paused, her 
head erect, her hair blowing, and her eyes fixed 
on the bay : 

“That girl ith tho athuming! I declare, it 
12 


182 


Boys and Girls. 


takth all the love I feel for dear Mitheth 
Rutherford to treat her dethently. It ith tho 
evident that the hath never had any advanta- 
geth.” 

A fat, ordinary looking dame, resplendent 
in jewelry, and having on a lace cap profusely 
decorated with pink ribbons, dropped her tat- 
ting for an instant, and, looking contemplative- 
ly at Emma, said : 

“Never mind, my dear; it will not do for 
the ladies to be unkind. The gentlemen un- 
derstand how to give such a person her posi- 
tion. She has no attention.” 

“Dear me, no!” and Emma laughed and 
tossed her head. “ The that like a thtick in the 
boat the other night, only now and then mak- 
ing a remark that jutht made me thtare. I 
can do that, you know, occathionally.” 

“ I’ve no doubt she feels the difference, al- 
though she says nothing,” remarked Mrs. Mer- 
idan. “ I have been a little tried, though, in 
having my younger children, just when their 
habits are forming, brought on an apparently 
equal footing with a person of no social cult- 
ure. Europe is the only place, after all, if 
you wish to keep your children excluded from 
all but their equals.” 


The Shop-girl. 


183 


“ Frank Middleton thaid to me yethterday, 
‘ Who ith that girl with the gray eyeth and 
fine figure? * You thould have heard George 
Hale dethcribe her firtht appearanth at Thta- 
pleton to him, and her attempth at what the 
evidently conthideth learned converthathion. 
The thith out on the piatha, morningth, read- 
ing the paperth and thothe dry looking maga- 
thineth that papa doeth, ath if the were really 
interethted. All put on, I know ! ” and Em- 
ma shrugged her shoulders. 

Just then Frank Middleton joined the par- 
ty, and Emma, turning archly, said, “ I wath 
telling them how Mithter Hale thattered your 
romantheth about Mith ” — pointing to Clari- 
bel in the distance. 

“ They are not shattered by any means. I 
have been on a voyage of discovery since, and 
I can assure you, Miss Elton is the most 
witty and intelligent young lady I have met 
this summer.” 

“You outrageouth man ! ” And Emma ut- 
tered a mock scream. 

“ How uncomplimentary ! ” exclaimed the 
fat lady, with as much voice as her rotundity 
would allow. 

“ If she is a shop-girl, she is a lady. I sup- 


Boys and Girls. 


184 

pose,” and Mr. Middleton looked a little sar- 
castic, “ that it is not impossible for a woman 
to employ her brain or her hands either, and 
still have the essentials of a true lady.” 

“ O, no,” replied Miss Meridan slowly, not 
liking to contradict, for she had a great ad- 
miration for Mr. Middleton, and a greater one 
still for his fortune. “ But women thould 
work at home. I think it is tho thocking to 
be expothed to the world ath girlth like Mith 
Elton are. The influentheth are tho unre- 
fining.” 

“That depends — ” And Mr. Middleton, 
looking in Claribel’s direction, turned his steps 
that way, and presently, to Miss Meridan’s 
chagrin, started with her for the bay, where he 
found it not unendurable to spend the whole 
morning with his companion, who was our 
Bentie, under the genial influences of respect 
and admiration. 

She went to Aunt Winifred that night, and, 
laying her head in her lap while shedding a 
few quiet tears, said sweetly : 

“ It is the hardest but it is the loveliest lesson 
I have learned yet, auntie. I know that I shall 
hereafter see the faces and the souls of girls 
before I do their riches or position. But it is 


The Shop-girl. 


i85 


cruel,” she added, with a flash of indignation. 
“ It is difficult enough to bear just as an ex- 
periment. If it were for life I should have to 
pray all the time, I fear, to keep me reconciled.” 

“ You have found one or two friends, if you 
are a shop-girl.” 

“ I know I have, and I shall never forget 
them. But I have found also a hundred cold 
and silent rebuffs, which make me feel ten years 
older. Do you know, I came just as near tell- 
ing that sweet Mrs. Merwin, when she was try- 
ing to comfort me without appearing to do so, 
all about it. But I thought I would wait.” 

The next evening there was to be a grand 
sailing party. 

The moon rose silver and mellow as a dream 
of fairy land, and the water was like a trans- 
parent mirror as it rippled under the gentle 
breeze blowing from the west. There were 
gayety, singing, repartee, and choruses, as a 
brown and jolly tar guided the sail-boat, filled 
with young people, out to a point where they 
could have an unobstructed view of the ocean. 

There were many exclamations over the 
beauty and the grandeur of the scene, all man- 
ner of laughable invocations to the mighty 
deep, and then, at some one’s suggestion, Miss 


Boys and Girls. 


i 86 

Meridan, who had a fine and well-trained 
voice, was asked to sing “Three Fishers.” 
There never was any ring of sympathy in what 
she said or sang, but the notes rolled out with 
that peculiar mellowness always produced by 
music on the water, and, when she concluded, 
all were very warm in praises. 

“ Now let us have a recitation ; ” and Mr. 
Middleton looked at Bentie. 

The indefinable prejudice against her among 
the young ladies, all growing out of her posi- 
tion, was marked this evening. She felt it 
with a defiance that set every nerve in a 
quiver. 

There was not much seconding of the invi- 
tation, but Mr. Middleton, not to be baffled, 
entreated so warmly, that Bentie finally de- 
cided to assert herself. 

Rising in the boat and facing the jolly old 
sailor, who was under the shadow of the sail — 
she was such a skilled oarswoman and had 
been so much on the water that the motion 
did not affect her — she grasped the mast with 
her firm white hand, and then glancing out 
upon the boundless, silvery expanse, began : 
“ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — 
roll ! ” 


The Shop-girl. 


187 

She had a rich, flexible, bell-like voice, and 
as, forgetting every thing but the stately maj- 
esty of the poem, she went on under an in- 
creasing inspiration, a feeling took possession 
of the wealthy but thoughtless girls at her 
feet, that either she had culture or a peculiar 
gift bestowed only by God. Genuine admira- 
tion took the place of their ignoble pride and 
exclusiveness, and when Bentie had concluded 
there was a general petition for more. But 
courage left her with the heartfelt encomiums 
pouring in upon her, and instead of expand- 
ing under the genial flow of praise, she all at 
once surprised herself, and the rest, too, by a 
suppressed but full sob that would not be con- 
trolled. 

Then to the girls, whose goodness and use- 
fulness had heretofore been largely theoretic, 
it occurred that it would be a praiseworthy 
act to bestow sympathy upon the young wom- 
an under Mrs. Rutherford’s care. 

But experience, in order to give sympathy 
aright, is as necessary as it is in other cases. 

Those weak tears! as she called them to 
Aunt Winifred. And nowthat there was whole- 
sale sympathetic yet patronizing offer of friend- 
ship, she withdrew quite into herself. “ I feel 


88 


Boys and Girls. 


just like a charity-fair,” she exclaimed bitterly, 
as her aunt expostulated with her, telling her 
to drink the cup bravely to the dregs. 

The next morning, however, always found 
her ready for a new effort. 

She developed so many strong, sweet traits 
under the temptation, and was so careful in 
never once betraying her identity, that her aunt 
loved her with more tenderness, if that were 
possible, than she ever had before. She now 
felt sure that Bentie had a strong foundation 
of firmness and principle under the outward 
gentleness and pliability of her demeanor. 

One evening, a fortnight after their arrival, 
and when they had lost all fear of having their 
secret discovered, they formed a part of a large 
group collected on the western piazza. 

Miss Emma Meridan was carrying on a 
merry dialogue with a half dozen incipient 
gentlemen with shadowy moustaches and 
side-whiskers. 

Bentie stood just far enough removed to 
involuntarily hear all and yet not form one of 
the party. Her simple white dress and blue 
ribbons looked plain beside the silks and laces 
and rich jewels of the other young girls who, 
though dressed elegantly, lacked, in most in- 


The Shop-girl. 189 

stances, a symplicity in style in consonance 
with their years. 

Mrs. Rutherford’s quietly observant eye in- 
stituted a comparison, and she could not re- 
sist drawing conclusions favorable to her girl. 
Her skin was so pure, her cheeks and chin 
so round, her teeth so white, her carriage so 
majestic, and there was such an honest, whole- 
some air about her whole expression, that her 
aunt felt that she would not have her changed 
in any respect. 

While “ Claribel ” stood there so gently, 
overhearing all that was said, the stages 
drove up, depositing a merry party, if one 
could judge by the laughter that rung out on 
the still air. 

Miss Emma and her set paused in their con- 
versation as the new arrivals made their ap- 
pearance on the veranda, and then indulged in 
the comments usual at such times. 

They were a stylish, aristocratic-looking 
company, and among them — valuable acqui- 
sitions at a watering-place — were four young 
gentlemen. One of them, with the lady on 
his arm, suddenly recognized a familiar face 
among the group, and hastened forward to 
greet her, 


190 


Boys and Girls. 


Bentie ’s eyes dilated, and the rich crimson 
flooded her cheeks. Springing forward, both 
hands extended, she clasped those of the 
young lady, who exclaimed : 

“ Bentie Claribel Elton Winthrop ! how did 
you happen here ? ” 

The secret was out. 


THE END. 


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